The landscape in Agronômica, a district of Florianopolis, where Recontar is based, is reminiscent of Rio de Janeiro.   On one side, the curving bay and blue skies stretch before us, framing the spectacular sunset.   On the other side, the slant of the hills is speckled with illegal, informal communities of precarious homes and poor public services.    

This year, we have widened our remit beyond the State Hospital to include families attending the local health centre, whose children are suffering from ill-health or at risk of ill-health.   This is important to begin to prevent more serious illness in these children and stop them from ending up at the hospital. 

We have met several times with the health centre staff.   The team of local health visitors, who carry out home visits in the community, will refer families to Recontar.   Their response to Recontar was enthusiastic and they confirmed that there are many families that would benefit from the programme.   ´However,´  one health visitor cautioned, ´the question is where or not they will come down the hill to participate.´   

Here we are again with this question of programme participation.   I have come to realize that a huge part of our work is to help people come down from the hill of poverty and lack of motivation and ideally to stay down.    In this country of growing opportunity, those who are already eager to come down the hill don´t need the programme.  They have kick-started themselves into improving their lives for themselves and their children. 

Those who are reluctant to truly come down the hill are those who are more likely to take part in pure aid programmes.   Our new social worker, Marcelo, tells of research he did at a Florianópolis charity connected to the Catholic church which offers monthly food baskets to poor families out of four different offices in the city.  His research showed that in several cases, up to four members of the same family were registered for food baskets, taking advantage of the charity´s lack of centralized information.   

Why enter a programme like Recontar´s, which demands active engagement and motivates and pushes families to pull themselves out of poverty, when they can live on hand-outs?

Communicating the benefits and gradually helping to change the outlooks of these families is one of the key challenges that we face.   Working with local donors to invest in these longer-term projects of income generation, housing and workshops to promote attitude and behavioural change is also a challenge.  Everyone wants to give something that directly goes into the hands of the family – powdered milk, a plastic toy or toothbrush.   Few want to pay the social worker´s salary or the rent for the space to house all the activities with the families.   

Among the twelve active families in the programme, participation has increased and improved, as they perceive the benefits and opportunities of their own active engagement.  Four new additional families have attended initial interviews and been visited at home and will now join the programme in April.    Some families contacted though never turned up for the initial interview.   Two families left the programme in 2009 due to lack of attendance and commitment.   

As we become more confident in our work and the number of families increases, our posture towards the family is becoming stronger.  We are getting better at demanding that the families gradually take more and more responsibility for their own progress and reduce the focus on  hand-outs.  Some moaning is audible as family members remark on how the programme is more challenging this year.  For example, on the weekly arts-and-craft days, when the families make products to sell, the mothers themselves have to make the lunch.  The recipe and preparation is overseen by a volunteer nutritionist, but the work is done by the mothers.  Last year, we prepared it for them.   Lack of attendance without good reason results more rapidly now in benefits lost.  

Slowly however, the families are responding to the tougher posture.   Mothers are telling us of  how they are trying the recipes handed out at home, several mothers are starting to work alongside the programme, mothers are taking more ownership of the programme centre and providing more suggestions of improvement, and the families are beginning to help eachother out, donating old clothes or furniture from one family to another.  Some are being more challenging of course, but each challenge is an opportunity to discuss with the family why they need to take responsibility for their own situation, rather than finding someone to blame or someone else to solve it. 

The culture of dependency and one-way entitlement within these families is slowly, slowly breaking down.