“Bolsa Familia, Oportunidades and other bedtime stories”

Salsa, love for ‘futbol’ and very small confidence in governments are things in common that Latin Americans have. This post’s title basically reflects how we usually feel when a new government program is announced: we lack trust of its effectiveness, we tend to wonder how much time is it going to be until the mafia behind it is discovered and we complain, complain a lot. From the outside, it might seem difficult to understand – after all, those programs reflect how social innovation can change people’s lives, right? Well, they might, but here’s another fact: after a couple of months of those program’s launch, we get press like this:

(Police investigates mafia at Bolsa Familia, October 5^th 2015 – MSN news) 

(Agent from Oportunidades is arrested for corruption, December 29^th 2011 – eleconomista.com.mx)

 

On the context I presented, it becomes very difficult to believe on the effectiveness of the programs. However, I am going to take a step back, and try to see them from a different perspective. I will intend to find the weak points, the cons that make these programs a failure from the eyes of Latin American citizens.

Let us start from the very foundation of it. Bolsa Familia, Oportunidades, and similar programs are, in essence, social innovations. And a social innovation is defined by three main characteristics: novelty, significant improvement and sustainability. Why aren’t they recognized as such by millions of people? We can analyze it one step at a time:

• Novelty: For the pioneers programs, we can say that this is an easy characteristic to find. Their idea was different and revolutionary for many reasons.

• Significant improvement. …and the lack of consensus might start here. What is the improvement the governments are trying to achieve? 
•  Common perception: As presented many on many sources, they could be trying to increase poor people’s income. That is certainly noble. But is it effective to try and achieve that by giving away money? 
• Desired perception: The real improvement they are trying to achieve is to build equality of opportunities, cut the problem from its roots. The effectiveness of the program would consist on empowering the future of the country - the children and youth – by giving them an environment in which they can grow healthy and well educated. By intervening on the start of their lives, the government can ensure to have better prepared citizens, and seed the foundations for healthier adults alongside with a variety of benefits it can bring.  
• Sustainability:
• Common perception: Yes, the government might have money right now, but how sustainable giving away money to poor people really is? What if the government needed that money for things that would benefit a larger sector of the population?
• Desired perception: By achieving the goals these programs are focused on, the government would have both an increase in income and a decrease in expenses. How so? Increasing formal employment by having a better educated population will lead to receiving more taxes. Having a healthier population potentially reduces the expense on public health, they would basically invest more on preventive care to anticipate illnesses. The money being saved could be reinvested on the same program, or focused on other social programs. 

The difference between the common perception and the desired perception resides on the quality of the program's diffusion. And from my experience living in Latin America, and interacting with people from the region I can ensure that the diffusion has not been bad but abysmal. Yes, most of this programs are not corruption-free, but they do set a big difference in poor people’s lives. If their diffusion would be better, both for the poor, the middle-class and the rest of stakeholders around them could understand the real impact, the long-term vision, and what the government is really trying to provide its citizens.
 

Having a good diffusion is not, in my opinion, just the government’s responsibility. It is actually a partnership between them, the press, non-profits, and some other agents. The strategy has to be set adequately, and the execution has to be impeccable. After all, programs like Bolsa Familia and Oportunidades should not be a bedtime story. They should be enablers for poor people’s dreams.