POVERTY: Brazil's Bolsa Familia

The main Brazilian meal is lunch, which the children eat free at school. When they’re home, their parents often eat chicken (a whole one goes for $5 and can last several meals) or salami (about a dollar a pound) cooked with inexpensive vegetables they pick up at the market and which occupy a drawer in their largely empty, ancient refrigerator.
Fruit is a luxury. Alves da Silva’s favorite, watermelon, goes for just over $2 at a nearby market. “If I could, I’d buy one every Sunday,” she said.
Other household expenses include a canister of cooking gas ($16), one of the first things the family buys when they receive their monthly payment. If it runs out before the month is out, they switch to a tiny wood-burning stove.
Household necessities like detergent, soap, toothpaste run about $20 a month. Clothing comes from hand-me-downs and the numerous nearby stores advertising “Items 5 Reais and Up,” though most cost precisely five reais ($2.75). That makes budgeting a breeze even for Alves da Silva, who only made it to second grade. She quickly reels off the math: six kids, 10 reais per outfit, 60 reais ($33) to dress the family, shoes not included.
In all, the family makes things work on a monthly income that includes the $70 from Bolsa Familia and about $50 to $100 from informal, temporary or odd jobs.
Until recently, Alves da Silva held a somewhat regular — if sub-minimum wage — job, making $65 a month for working four days a week as a housekeeper and babysitter. But she lost that job after she burned herself with an iron (at her home) and took a month to recover. Dos Santos has dispersed CVs to local chain stores and supermarkets, but has had no luck. (Since he has only a fourth-grade education — and no computer, of course — he paid $1 to have a basic resume created for him at the local shop.)
Often, jobs come from luck. As Dos Santos walked into the center of Tabuleiro on a recent evening, he ran into a bakery owner he knows named Adriano.
“Hey man, can you stop by the bakery tomorrow?” said Adriano.
“Sure,” responded Dos Santos.
And voila, a day’s work that would net him $11 to $14. His wife currently has been working a twice-a-week housekeeping gig, which nets her $8 to $11 a day up to twice a week.
The state helps out with health care and medication, free — if not stellar — at the local clinic. And though Dos Santos claims life in the city is “every man for himself,” friends and family do help out: Dos Santos gets around on bicycle that was a gift from his mother, who lives nearby. And Alves da Silva goes the gym every night at 7 p.m., the $13 a month membership paid for by her close friend, Janicleide’s godmother.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/brazil/100610/bolsa-familia?page=0,1