Artisanal Bakery inside a community at Brazil biggest city, brings empowerment and income to poor women

The recent World Bank research called “Gender World Development Report 2012”, shows that between 1998 and 2008 about 552 million women joined work force around the world. The overall rate of female labor force participation rose from 50.2% to 51.8% between 1980 and 2009,while the male rate fell from 82% to 77.7%. Currently, four in ten workers are women, but according to the research director, Ana Ravenga, “Women still receives lower payments, have smaller business than men, are in higher number in unpaid jobs (72% in Brazil) and face more difficulty to get credit”.

Although the scenario is still not the ideal, there are some initiatives that are changing this outlook. One of them is the project called “Mãos de Maria”, developed inside the second biggest slum in São Paulo, Brazil, with a hundred thousand inhabitants, where 47% are women. The project has already trained about 200 women since October 2009 to prepare breads and pastries and in the last September 12 th, the artisanal bakery was inaugurated.

The paraisópolis resident, Ivoneide Gonçalves da Silva, participated in the classes although she was already selling pastries at her home. “I did the course because I needed to have a certificate in case I would work outside the community. But during the classes I could learn news stuffs with the

teachers and the other women”. Ivoneide gains R$ 400 (something like US$ 220) per month with the production and is part of paraisópolis 20% women that sustain financially their homes. “With this money I take care of my children, because their father exists only in the name. There are weekends that I receive orders to do a thousand pastries”. Her sister, Josefa Gonçalves da Silva, is also backering and selling products since she participated at Mãos de Maria training. “I used to work in a snackbar but I didn´t know how to do stylist candies for parties. Before I entered the classes I was doing handicraft, but know I am earning more money with breads and pastries”.

The “Mãos de Maria” project was idealized by the Paraisópolis Women Association with the São Paulo State Social Fund. Before using the industrial kitchen to teach the women to do breads and pastries, the place was used to give free meal to the poorest residents inside the community. According to the Paraisópolis Women Association President, Juliana Gonçalves Rodrigues, 200 meals were delivered per day, but this wasn´t changing the people´s life. “We realized that this wasn´t generating income and we were having difficulty to get ingredients to prepare the food. Everything that we got was donated, including the oven, the refrigerator and wardrobe”. The entity director and teacher at Mãos de Maria, Ivone Britto dos Santos, observe that even people that didn’t need it, were going to get free food.

Besides the income creation, other project benefit is the fact that the women can work in their own home. “Women used to get a job but didn´t have the money to pay a children day care center. Now they can work and take care of them at the same time and this is going well”, says Francinilda Oliveira da Silva, the other teacher at Mãos de Maria and director at Paraisópolis Women Association. The World Bank research claims that female-headed enterprises are more likely than male-headed enterprises to be home-based and operate within the household. Furthermore, it also shows that Female entrepreneurs are also more likely than their male counterparts to be “necessity” entrepreneurs (to view entrepreneurship as a choice of last resort) and less likely to be “opportunity” entrepreneurs.

Although the project intention was to capacitate women, men got interested also. An example was a shy sixteen year boy that wanted to know how to cook. “This experience was great because than he has taught to his mother what he had learned here”, says Ivone.

The orders are already coming from inside and outside the community and the price average charged is R$ 25 (14 dollars) for a hundred units. “In this month, we are going to provide our products to a credit company that is

going to do an action here in paraisópolis”, celebrates Juliana Gonçalves. According to Ivone, the residents prefer to buy from them than from the local Bakeries. “This places are pretty but they don´t have our quality”. Due to requests increase, they are planning to move to a bigger kitchen in a house that will be the Paraisópolis Women Association head office.

Mãos de Maria is one of the many actions that the Women Association has achieved and intends to accomplish in the community. Working since 2006, they have done projects in digital inclusion, job search, young people capacitance and congress execution about child-birth security. The next movements include a handicraft course and signatures collection to build a hospital inside the community. “Our idea is to bring development to everyone, but we wanted to empower women, since between the 60 NGOs that exist inside paraisópolis, none work specifically to women”, claims Juliana Gonçalves.

The women entrepreneurship in Brasil can be confirmed in a research entitled “Global Entrepreneurship Monitor” held by the London Bussiness School. In 2010, 49,3% from all the entrepreneurs in the country were women. According to the manager at a brazilin institution that gives support to micro and small companies – Sebrae - , Jaqueline Aparecida de Almeida, “There is a trend indicating that women seek alternative enterprises to supplement family income, beyond what they have in recent years increasingly assuming the home support as the family head, expanding participation in the economy”.

The study shows that commerce is the preference to 33% of this women when they start their bussiness. Their accomplish can be seen at the Award Business Woman, created by Sebrae in 2004, that aims to identify, select and reward the women entrepreneurs life histories throughout Brazil. The initiative is in partnership with the Special Secretariat of Policies for Women and the Brazil Women Professional and Bussiness Federation of Associations (BPW). In 2010 there were 3,536 subscribers: 215 for "collective Business" and 3321 for "Small Business”. “These women have turned their dreams into reality and are examples to others who want to carry out the dream of being entrepreneurs”, says Jaqueline Aparecida.