By DAN LEVIN
Published: May 29, 2011
BEIJING — In December 2009, a rejection letter from Columbia University found its way to the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. It was addressed to Lu Jingyu, a top student and member of her school’s student government. As she read the disheartening words, Ms. Lu immediately began to panic. Where had she gone wrong? How could she fix this?
Shiho Fukada for The International Herald Tribune
Steven Ma, right, the founder of ThinkTank Learning, in his Beijing facility, where students are taught how to get into U.S. colleges.
For answers, she turned to ThinkTank Learning, a college admission consulting company from California that had recently opened an office in Shenzhen, next door to Hong Kong.
“I wanted American professionals to look at my application and shed some new light on how I could make it better,” she said.
The price was steep: 100,000 renminbi, or $15,000. But it came with a 100 percent money-back guarantee — if Ms. Lu was rejected from the nine selective U.S. universities to which she applied, her family would get a full refund.
Ms. Lu brainstormed with a ThinkTank consultant on ways to redo her admissions essay, which had originally been about playing badminton. The new version she came up with focused on a cross-strait dialogue conference that Ms. Lu had organized with high schoolers in Taiwan.
Happily for Ms. Lu and for ThinkTank, the approach worked. She has just completed her first year at the University of Pennsylvania.
As a record number of students from outside the United States compete for a limited number of spots at the most selective American colleges, companies like ThinkTank are seeking to profit from their ambitions.
In the United States, students have long turned to independent college counselors, but in recent years, larger outfits have entered the market, offering full-service designer courses, extracurricular activities and focused application assistance. These services have spread to the fast-growing and lucrative market in China.
With China sending more students to American colleges than any other country, the competition for spots at the top schools has soared. During the 2009-10 academic year, 39,947 Chinese undergraduates were studying in the United States, a 52 percent increase from the year before and about five times as many as five years earlier, according to the Institute of International Education, a U.S. organization.
But students from China can find themselves ill-prepared for the admissions process at American colleges. The education system in mainland China focuses on assiduous preparation for the national university entrance exam, the gaokao, often at the expense of extracurricular activities.
About 400 overseas education agencies — including joint Chinese-foreign schools, language training centers and college application consulting agencies — are certified by the Chinese Ministry of Education. The ministry is affiliated with the two largest application consulting agencies in China, the China Center for International Education Exchange and Chivast Education International.
Some of these agencies offer to write their clients’ college essays from scratch, train them for alumni interviews and even modify student transcripts, consultants have said.
Capitalizing on the increasingly globalized education system, ThinkTank Learning has tapped into the market in the United States and China.
The founder of the company is Steven Ma, 32, a former Wall Street analyst who started the company as a business for preparing students for college entrance tests in 2002 before expanding into application consulting in 2006, starting with seven students. In 2010, that number had risen to 300, including 75 from China. The company said it made about $7 million last year, with 50 percent from admission consulting.
ThinkTank said it was able to distill the college admissions process into an exact science, which Mr. Ma compared with genetic engineering. “We make unnatural stuff happen,” he said.
Students, whose parents often pay tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, are molded by ThinkTank into well-rounded, socially conscious overachievers through a regimen often beginning as early as the year before entering high school. The company designs extracurricular activities for the students; guides them in essay writing; tutors them for the SAT, the U.S. college admission exam; and helps them with meet-and-greet sessions with alumni.
“There’s a system built by colleges designed to pick out future stars and we are here to crack that system,” Mr. Ma said.
LuShuang Xu provides an example of that approach. Ms. Xu, who was born and raised in China before emigrating to suburban California at age 9, had high hopes that she would be the first in her family to go to college. But poor results on a practice SAT and a dearth of extracurricular activities convinced Ms. Xu, 17, that she needed a scholastic makeover if she were to make it into a school her parents could brag about to relatives.
ThinkTank sent her to a public speaking camp, helped her improve her college essay and gave her the e-mail addresses of all the members of the Stanford University history department. At the company’s prompting, she found two internships with department professors. She also enrolled in ThinkTank’s college prep courses, which helped improve her SAT score 410 points to 2160 out of 2400. Next autumn, she will start at Harvard University.
ThinkTank’s success with students in California’s Asian-American community, which accounts for 90 percent of the company’s American clients, has drawn interest from wealthy parents in China. Mr. Ma opened an office in Shenzhen in 2009 and another in Beijing last year.
The company entered China at a time when the college consulting industry on the mainland was booming, with numerous agencies promising to make Chinese student’s academic dreams come true, often through questionable practices.
One company, Best Education, has offices across China and charges clients an average of 500,000 renminbi for writing clients’ essays, training them for the visa interview at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and providing career guidance.
“The students just supply their information and we do all the work,” said one representative, who requested anonymity to protect his job. Best Education offers a 50 percent refund if an applicant is rejected by the student’s chosen schools.
Chinese agencies may not want to alert colleges to their involvement, because applications that clearly appear to come from agencies are rejected by U.S. colleges, but the agencies promote their success in Mandarin. The Future Boshi Overseas Education Agency in Beijing gives a tally on its Web site of clients admitted by each university, including two to Harvard in 2010 and one in 2011.
Reached by telephone, an agency representative said the company did a lot more than just polish résumés. “If a client’s English is poor, our trained professionals can write the essay to make sure it looks perfect,” she said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid repercussions from her employer.
The industry’s aggressive practices have been condemned by many American colleges, which say they disapprove of students’ families hiring consultants.
“Students have a responsibility to identify their own path toward future goals, rather than keying in how to get into a certain school,” said Barbara Knuth, the vice provost at Cornell University in New York State, who oversees undergraduate admissions.
Harvard said in an e-mail that it “reviews every application individually and has no interaction” with college admission consulting firms, “though we are certainly aware of their existence.” The University of Pennsylvania, which accepted Ms. Lu from Shenzhen, did not respond to requests for comment.
Despite the universities’ unease with these practices, application consulting has proved too profitable to ignore.
Mr. Ma said that out of 110 mainland students, only one has needed a refund, though two clients have been granted admission only if they pay full tuition.
Helping students from China clear the college entry hurdles has presented ThinkTank with a fresh set of challenges. Often they have poor English language skills and have done little with their free time beyond homework. Yet their parents often demand the Ivy League.
“We really have to hold their hand and do everything along with them,” Mr. Ma said, including deliberately leaving spelling mistakes on college essays so they look authentic, training them for the Test of English as a Foreign Language and building extracurricular activities from the ground up.
ThinkTank has founded Model United Nations groups, built a Web site for a Shanghai student’s photography project to get news media coverage and helped another obtain funding to build a hydroelectric generator. For ambitious Chinese parents, ThinkTank’s sales pitch is difficult to resist. Li Manhong, a homemaker from Beijing, has planned for years to send her 17-year-old son to an American college, going so far as to enroll him in a private high school in Portland, Oregon, for the past two years to improve his English and his résumé.
After learning about ThinkTank from a neighbor, Ms. Li persuaded her husband to sign a contract for 90,000 renminbi, which focuses on nine selective U.S. schools. ThinkTank will train her son for the SAT and help him pick internships and even college courses once he becomes a freshman. Ms. Li sees the cost as an investment in her son’s future.
“Whatever it takes to reach his maximum potential,” she said. “It’s worth it.”
The BRICS Group is made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
It was founded in 2009 and was originally the BRIC Group; South Africa joined in April 2011. Its first summit meeting was held in Yekaterinburg, Russia on June 16, 2009, a session that was intended to underscore the rising economic clout of these four major developing countries and their demand for a greater voice in the world.
All four had expressed varying degrees of discomfort with Washington's financial stewardship, and were particularly concerned about the value of the dollar at a time of rapidly mounting indebtedness in the United States.
The BRIC countries comprise about 15 percent of the world economy and, perhaps more important, have about 40 percent of global currency reserves. Brazil, India and China have also weathered the financial crisis better than the world as a whole; South Africa has the most developed economy south of the Sahara.
While they are far from a monolithic group, they are generally united in their frustration with the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency, which enables Washington to run budget deficits without fear of facing the kind of budgetary day of reckoning that other countries risk.
The excess dollars pile up in foreign central banks, leaving those countries with a difficult choice: reinvesting the dollars in United States securities or holding them and facing an increase in the value of their own currencies, making their products less competitive in world markets.
While there have been periodic complaints about the dollar through the years, the criticisms from the BRIC countries have become more frequent and more acerbic lately, and have included calls for a supranational currency to replace the dollar.
Senior officials in most of the BRIC governments -- India, which does not depend as much on trade, is something of an exception -- assert that while the United States has acted irresponsibly over the last 30 years by amassing too much debt, they will be the ones who suffer.
China, Brazil and Russia have said that they will purchase notes from the International Monetary Fund to begin diversifying their reserves, and China has taken steps to allow the renminbi to trade internationally, bolstering its case as a potential reserve currency.
Still, the reality is that even many forceful critics of the dollar see no immediate alternative to it as the vehicle for international trade. No other markets in the world have the depth and liquidity of those in the United States, experts say.
The very notion of the BRIC nations was conceived in 2001 by an economist for Goldman Sachs, and only then embraced by the countries themselves. Their leaders have conducted informal discussions before, but the June 2009 event was their first formal gathering.
April 22, 2011, 9:35 am
HONG KONG — China’s economic boom has made many Chinese very wealthy indeed. A new study by the consulting firm Bain & Company shows just how many — and how rapidly — the ranks of the rich are swelling in this country of 1.3 billion.
Bain estimates that the number of high-net-worth individuals — mostly first-generation entrepreneurs who have more than 10 million renminbi, or about $1.5 million, in investable assets — will grow to 585,000 this year. That’s twice the number than in 2008. Moreover, the number of individuals who are worth more than 100 million renminbi is rising at its fastest pace.
"Wealth creation in China is marching on unimpeded,’’ said Johnson Chng, Bain’s chief of financial services in greater China and the author of the study.
The greatest concentration of millionaires and multimillionaires are in Beijing; Shanghai; the provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangsu, which are adjacent to Shanghai; and the southern province of Guangdong. More than 30,000 high-net-worth individuals live in each of these areas.
But central and western areas of China have the speediest growth rates. In provinces like Sichuan, Hunan and Hubei, and the Bohai Bay basin (including Tianjin and Liaoning) the number of rich soared by a rate of 31 to 40 percent a year from 2008 to 2010, according to the Bain study, which was conducted in collaboration with China Merchants Bank.
This echoes — and highlights — the gradual, partially Beijing-engineered shift of economic wealth and activity away from the coastal areas into the country’s more underdeveloped interior.
All this may be good news for companies wishing to cash in on the increasing affluence to be found in China (and many other rapidly growing Asian countries).
Luxury-goods makers and retailers from Luis Vuitton to Samsonite to Ermenegildo Zegna have spent considerable time, effort and cash into rolling out a formidable presence in China. So for that matter have banks, which have been racing to build their private banking business. And China’s rich increasingly trust and use such services: 45 percent cited these as major investment channels in the Bain study, up from only 15 percent in 2008 — though the bulk of that business currently goes to domestic, rather than overseas, banks.
For the authorities in Beijing, however, the rapidly widening wealth gap in China is an increasing concern. Many commentators now consider it as one of the country’s most pressing economic problems.
Striking truckers in Shanghai, angered by the sharp rise in fuel prices in recent months, this week hammered home an important point: many millions of Chinese have missed out on the wealth boom spotlighted by the Bain report.
By AZAM AHMED
Antonio Scorza/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Cars at the port in Rio de Janeiro. Last year, Brazil’s economy grew 7.5 percent, attracting the interest of hedge funds.
Ten years ago, Goldman Sachs proclaimed that Brazil was among the new economic powerhouses. Now it is the next frontier for hedge funds.
Looking to capitalize on the fast-growing region, global hedge fund managers have started to descend on Brazil. The industry’s biggest players are wooing top talent, opening new offices and buying local firms — all part of a broader effort to expand their investment reach.
“Latin America suffered because it was always believed that ‘Brazil is the land of the future and always will be,’” said Marko Dimitrijevic, founder of Everest Capital, a Florida-based emerging market hedge fund that oversees $2 billion. “But it looks like the future is now.”
Late last year, JPMorgan Chase’s Highbridge Capital purchased a majority stake in Gávea Investimentos, a top Brazilian hedge fund. Brevan Howard, one of Europe’s largest hedge funds, recently set up shop in São Paulo. This week, the first Hedge Fund Brazil Forum, an industry conference held at the Copacabana Palace Hotel in Rio de Janeiro, drew hundreds of attendees, including representatives from premier shops like Paulson & Company and SAC Capital Advisors.
In all, hedge fund assets devoted to the region rose 75 percent, to $21.4 billion, in 2010, according to data from Hedge Fund Research.
The strategy follows a well-worn playbook for hedge funds. Just as firms moved into Hong Kong to gain entry to the lucrative Chinese market a decade back, they are using Brazil as a beachhead for the rest of Latin America. The Hedge Fund Association planted an official industry flag on Wednesday, establishing a regional chapter with a local outpost in Brazil.
The appeal is obvious. While many developed countries have sputtered amid weak economic growth, Brazil has continued to thrive, given its rich reserve of natural resources and growing middle class. Last year, the country’s gross domestic product increased 7.5 percent — helping catapult Brazil ahead of Britain and France to become the fifth-largest economy in the world.
“In the past five years, about 34 million Brazilians entered the middle class,” said Oscar Decotelli, a partner at Vision Brazil Investments, a $2 billion alternative investment firm based in São Paulo. “This for a population of 200 million is significant. Brazil is not just a commodity story, but a very strong domestic story.”
Brazil may also benefit from a shifting emphasis in developing countries. Money has poured into China and the rest of region in recent years, prompting fears that the region is a bubble ready to burst. Asia, excluding Japan, accounts for half of hedge fund assets dedicated to emerging markets. By comparison, Latin America represents roughly 11 percent.
“People were a lot more bullish on Asian markets over the last two to three years because everything seemed to be going one way,” said Anurag Bhardwaj, head of strategic consulting at Barclays Capital, which is set to publish a survey on investor sentiment in April. “Investors are looking to other markets less correlated but with good fundamentals, and Brazil definitely falls into that category.”
Even so, the region faces headwinds. While Latin America has been relatively strong coming out of the global economic crisis, analysts are becoming increasingly concerned about inflation. The investment bank Goldman Sachs recently cut its growth forecasts for Brazil for 2011 and 2012.
Investors, too, are worried that the flood of new money piling into the market could eventually lead to diminished returns. Over the last five years, the MSCI Latin America index has gained an annualized 13 percent — the best performance of any emerging market region.
“What is the famous saying? If the taxi driver is talking about an investment, you know it’s time to sell,” said Mr. Decotelli of Vision Brazil.
But Mr. Decotelli says he thinks Brazil and the rest of the Latin America are still at the beginning of a growth story. The addition of large institutional players should help the market evolve, rather than hold it back.
“We’re still an industry very much dominated by local investors,” he said. “It is very important we are open to the international community. We will have better liquidity and diversification of strategies.”
As they explore this new territory, hedge funds are looking to well-connected executives with strong local ties. As in Asia, firms are tapping prominent names to lead their efforts, giving them much-needed political and business contacts in the country.
When Highbridge purchased a majority stake in Gávea last year for $6 billion, the deal came with the firm’s marquee founder, Arminio Fraga, the former president of the central bank of Brazil. Brevan Howard tapped Mario Mesquita, former deputy of the country’s central bank, to run its new research operations in Brazil.
A local presence serves two purposes. First, it allows for quick, on-the-ground research. That’s especially important as companies look increasingly beyond their borders for growth. In the first quarter of the year, deals aimed at Brazil amounted to $13.2 billion, a 370 percent increase over the comparable period in 2010, according to Thomson Reuters.
Second, hedge funds can better woo potential investors in the region, a newfound source of wealth. Last spring, Morgan Stanley opened a hedge fund office in São Paulo to service Latin American clients.
“Some people built too much too fast in Hong Kong, so as a general matter they are going to approach Brazil with more of a ‘Hey, let’s try this out’ rather than ‘Let’s put 16 people on the ground right away,’ ” said Daniel Hunter, a partner at the law firm Schulte Roth & Zabel. “All I can tell you is that there is definitely a desire in parts of the hedge fund space to find out what’s going on in Brazil and find out how to tap into it.”
By HILARY E. O'HAIRE
The existence of street children is most often viewed as a significant problem, stripping youth of their humanity and burdening them with the everyday concern of survival. It is easy to analyze this complicated issue objectively, yet the actual experiences of the children are just as easily lost. It is therefore necessary to approach the subject with the inclusion of contextual information regarding the problem. Statistical evidence provides only a narrow view of the problem. Through a combination of both numbers and context, the many problems contributing to their existence can be addressed. This growing issue is evident in many countries throughout the world; however, its presence in Brazil and Latin America is the most studied. Poverty, the work force, substance abuse, and general homelessness in Brazil are just a few of the many influences that affect the lives of street children. In addressing these effects, this paper questions how the topic of street children is an outgrowth of its surroundings. Furthermore, recent research has been focused on providing grass-roots solutions to the problem; thus, the remainder of the analysis centers on the new directions being taken in addressing this large-scale issue.
“We sniff glue because we need to. We steal- watches, necklaces. We don’t have anywhere to eat, we don’t have anywhere to sleep, we don’t have anywhere to stay- that’s why we steal. I steal, I walk around, I sniff glue, and then I can’t do anything. I haven’t got a Dad- he died seven years ago. I have eight brothers and sisters and I can’t really stay at home, so I live on the street. That’s how I lead my life”(Dimenstein, 1991, p.22)
To begin with, one must understand the term ‘street children’ itself. Who are they? UNICEF defines them as “children who live in the streets. The street is their home” (Fernandes & Vaughn, 2008, p.670). While this definition seems mundane and simple, there are numerous ongoing factors that compose it. The crux and most-contributing context to this problem is the issue of poverty. Other influences upon street children cannot be understood aside from it, and it is continually addressed throughout this analysis. For instance, the lack of both education and job opportunities is an outgrowth of poverty within Brazilian society. The nation’s wealthiest 20 percent of the population has access to over 65 percent of the entire country’s wealth. More than 45 million people are living in poverty, with 32 million children living in families that make less than $40 US dollars per month. It is easy to be unbothered by statistical evidence, but the existence of street children is a living result of Brazil’s numerous socioeconomic issues. “Poverty is one of the reasons that lead children to the street. The process of children going to the streets to work in legal or illegal businesses to supplement family income contributes in part to the later phenomenon of street children: children on the street become children of the street” (Fernandes &Vaughn, 2008, p.671-2). But where does this distinction lie?
The conceptual difference between children of the street and children on the street was determined in a 1989 meeting on the issue. Children of the street were described as youth under the age of 18 living in urban areas and who call the street their principal home, assuming they no longer live in their familial residence. The street is the central environment from which they develop and obtain social skills. Children on the street, however, are children under the age of 18 who maintain stronger family ties, yet continue to spend the majority of their time in the streets. They work and engage in activities to ensure their survival, their families’, or even that of a third party. For the purposes of this paper, both types will be continually referred to as street children. This is the simplest way to explore the other surrounding factors that contribute to any type of life on street.
Street children can be best understood as a product of their context and socialization, and this includes aspects of their familial and socioeconomic background. In looking at Brazilian society, the structure and role of the family plays an integral part in the socialization and development of children. In each culture, the family maintains a certain responsibility toward the minimal requirements for their offspring’s survival. Research on contemporary Brazilian families reveals that a nuclear family structure is the most common type, a result of a population and industrialization boom that led to the “formation of an urban proletariat” (Mickelson, 2000, p.44). On a socioeconomic level, this urban class was faced with overpopulation, housing shortages, and a lack of many other basic amenities. Such factors allowed the development of households in favelas, otherwise known as slum areas, that are located on the outskirts of major cites.
Migrants to these areas were confident they would find more employment opportunities as well as an overall better future for themselves. However, “more than 50 percent of favelados (people living infavelas) are unemployed and do not have medical assistance or unemployment benefits” (Fernandes &Vaughn, 2008, p.672). Inflation and ongoing economic problems continue to present difficulties for families to live decently, with the head of the family working excess hours and other family members entering the labor force to ensure better income. Often this is seen in the joining of the informal economy, such as vending on the street, to make any earnings possible to support the family. These conditions threaten the overall organization and stability of Brazilian families, as well as the socialization of their children. In the process of a child’s development, “families are expected to instill in children their society’s basic values, attitudes, and modes of behavior” (Boocock & Scott, 2005, p. 74). This harsh economic condition is the world many Brazilian children are born into, an urban culture based on pressure and the basic need for survival. This environment has caused difficulty for families to properly socialize their children, and also has prevented the development of values outside those of subsistence.
Additional family members, as previously mentioned, are often forced to join the labor force in the interest of their family’s survival. This is noted by a rise in women workers, but also by the increasing numbers of children and adolescents in the Brazilian work force. “A 1995 survey of households reported that almost 5 million children between the ages of 10 and 14 were working…the percentage of youth in the labor force varies with the families’ socioeconomic status; for example, the rate of children’s economic activity declines as family income rises” (Mickelson, 2000, p.47). This child labor force is therefore widely dominated by poorer children. The issue of unemployment and lack of jobs contributes to widespread informal economic activities that include vending and shoe-shining, but also the illicit businesses of prostitution and drug sales. Children have become a workforce commodity, and the street serves as an attractive workplace to gain extra income for the family. Urbanization has caused the development of child labor to thus evolve from a family agriculture business to industrial and illegal work within the street’s informal economy.
In addition to the influence of family, school is the other means by which children become socialized and aware of their particular culture and values. Although illiteracy in Brazil has been decreasing, the rising number of child laborers has the potential to hurt the educational system. Out of a total 522,185 child workers aged 5 to 9, 78 percent of them are also enrolled and going to school. This statistic alone is evidence of how the child labor force must severely affect the children’s ability to learn. Increased fatigue, the large quantity of work, and the overall detrimental effect on mental health are probable in the circumstance of balancing school and work. In addition to these factors, the quality of the education they are receiving is also questionable. Schools are supported through tax revenues by the federal government as well as the states, but often “function ineffectively because of poor financial management and frequent strikes by severely underpaid public school teachers” (Mickelson, 2000, p.48). It is also difficult for schools to keep pace with the rapid overpopulation and urban growth that has occurred in recent years. The educational system struggles to effectively socialize children due to its outdated schools, lack of seats for enrollment, and the abundance of strikes by teachers. Less than 6 percent of the adults in Brazilian families have completed 15 or more years of school (to the college level). The need for income as well as the toll of labor upon the body place great stress on one’s educational ability. Subsistence simply dominates the possibility of education.
Another aspect that schools lack in regards to the socialization of children is their inability to build upon the body of knowledge gained outside of school. Research by Terezinha Carraher in 1991 found that schools fail to take advantage of “the knowledge and rationale of the students so as to expand it; schools are aware of the skills that children of the lower classes must have if they are to survive in big cities” (Mickelson, 2000, p.48). This type of knowledge may be referred to as “street smart” and is rarely emphasized in school. It is the difficulty of switching from the oral expression of the street to the written expression of the classroom that is the root of the problem. Teachers do not structure their curriculum around these “street” learning experiences and thus many students are not given opportunities to excel.
Socioeconomic influences greatly contribute to the forced situation street children often find themselves in. Poverty also could have led to increased stresses in their former homes, which is sometimes manifested in the form of abuse. Abandonment, neglect, and abuse therefore are also considered as heavily determinants of this issue. The parents often socialize their children based upon their own experience. “Generally, children’s parents also suffered abuse and neglect from their own parents. Parents of street children repeat the same behavior with their own children, which contributes to the children choosing the street as their home” (Fernandes & Vaughn, 2008, p. 673). This abuse also can take many forms, whether psychological, emotional, or sexual. Recent research exploring this type of violence toward street children has found that 23 percent of street children reported abuse as their reason for leaving home. This past of abuse is subsequently engrained within the child and is therefore translated to their behavior on the streets. This behavior often manifests in some form of aggression, which has led to the association of street children with violence and immoral activities.
A large aspect of these “immoral activities” is the misuse of substances by the children. It is difficult to imagine a child the age of 10 as a frequent drug user. Truthfully, however, substance abuse is very widespread among the street children population, the most popular being inhalants, alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine. The majority of children, especially males, use inhalants. They are able to most easily get their hands on glue, nail polish remover, hair spray, cleaning fluids, and other legal and common goods. Studies have found that the use of inhalants, particularly the sniffing of glue, has been “increasing principally among children and teenagers of low socioeconomic status” (Fernandes & Vaughn, 2008, p. 674). These substances such as glue compose a great part of these children’s lives. “They prefer glue because it is their means of identity. Those who do not sniff are considered laranjas (street novices). For The youngest ones, glue sniffing is an initiation rite that makes them feel part of the group” (Moorehead, 1990, p. 20). Therefore this type of abuse of drugs and common goods is often thought of as method of coping with life’s daily struggles. Poverty, neglect, and physical abuse are all contributing factors to this major problem brewing within street children society.
Inhalants, specifically, can cause various damaging psychobiological effects to the child. The sniffing of glue contributes to problems such as liver toxicity, renal failure, and death. The body’s Central Nervous System is the most affected system within the body of an inhalant user. Glue is a very debilitating substance because the deadly chemicals attack neurons as well as clog the respiratory system. “It is not physically addictive, but children quickly develop a psychological dependence on it. The law prohibits the sale of glue to minors…[thus] increasingly, the children rely on ‘street fathers’ for their daily supply” (Moorehead, 1990, p.20). It is a method of peer acceptance, for many children form groups on the street for the purposes of protection and self-defense. They sleep together, beg together, and carry out the majority of their daily activities as a group. Glue sniffing strengthens the in-group bond as well as acts as a shield to the discouraging environment they are struggling to survive in.
How do children effectively gain access to these drugs as well as to food? Another significant contributor to the life and context of street children is the culture of stealing. Stealing operates effectively within their street system and is the basic method of survival. “Stealing is a sport as well as a necessity. While the older children are out stealing, the younger ones collect good money on their noontime begging sweeps in the lunch bars” (Moorehead, 1990, p.18). From this lifestyle of stealing comes an important aspect to consider: the relationship of the children with the police. Principally, the police appear as a fearful figure in the lives of the children. They consider the worst part of their experience on the street to be their interactions with the authorities. Children have reported that even if they maintained a positive relationship with a policeman they were chastised and excluded from their group. In an effort to escape the problematic authorities in the home, they encounter a second type in the streets. Instead of acting as a form of a protection, the police often bring more violence into the lives of the children.
The final discussion of the surroundings contributing to the existence of street children is the place of violence. The murdering of street children and the violence they face is one of the lesser-known aspects of this crisis. Although official police death squads have slowly disintegrated since the 1970’s, the war on street children is still aggressively pursued by organizations called justiceiros (the avengers). These groups are often supported and organized by police force members, and their activity is encouraged on the basis of the children’s worthless and dangerous place in society. This culture of violence continues to exist today with the determination to exterminate Brazil’s undesirable children. An 18 year-old boy recounts his experience when almost murdered saying “they caught me, took me to the forest, tore off my clothing, left me in my underwear. They pointed a revolver at my forehead, in my mouth, in every hole they could find, and threatened to shoot” (Hecht, 1998, p.132). In addition to the threat of violence by police-supported groups, street children experience discrimination and violence from citizens on a day to day level. “In one large Latin American city, the officially licensed radio station not long ago broadcast a suggestion that citizens should take matters into their own hands and put an end to the children who are infesting their streets. The result, for a while, was that an average of two street children were found dead every day” (Moorehead, 1990, p.32). Such violence explains the need for street children to remain in groups for their own protection. These groups contribute to the socialization and development the children undergo in the absence of family influence. These children are truly a product of their surroundings.
After examining all the major aspects of the children’s environment, this paper now seeks to question the types of programs and solutions being offered in regards to this topic. Initially, Brazil offered many penalizing and restraining programs that were designed simply to eliminate the problem. This focus, however, has clearly done nothing but promote more violence among the streets. The National Foundation for the Well-Being of Minors and the State Foundations for the Well-Being of Minors were the principal organizations that enacted restrictive programs regarding the issue. They were responsible for “giving restrictive asylum to abandoned children and delinquents” (Fernandes & Vaughn, 2008, p.675). With these institutions under reform, Non-Governmental organizations (NGOs) are now the primary source of programs for street children. Many of these programs address factors such as homelessness, hunger, and social exclusion. As Fernandes and Vaughn (2008, p.675) explain, however, there are very few programs that focus on the reasons for becoming a street child.
An example of a Non-Governmental organization that seeks to address the cause of children on the street is the family social-work program known as Grupo Ruas e Praças (GRP). They claim to work ‘with’ and not ‘for’ street children. After working to aid them for many years, the group reformed their approach to focus on reasons why the child leaves the family. Thus their work centers on involving the entire family in the process. “This approach was based on the assumption that family members command the skills and have sufficient resources to solve their own problems, so that help should be offered in way that would not create dependency. The centre of the concept was to enable the families to become active protagonists of their history and their future” (Schwinger, 2007, p. 803). The program identifies the particular reasons why children end up living on the streets and then decides how to help them. They categorize such reasons as either material (poor housing, poverty, hunger) or non-material (drugs, general overload, abuse and neglect).
From here, GRP takes steps to involve the children and their parents throughout the process of empowering solutions. The social worker will visit the child’s home without them first to inform the family of his or her well-being. This is often at the relief of the parents. They then plan the first reunion meeting of the child with their parents around some form of holiday or celebration because of the informal atmosphere. The family also engages in life counseling and meetings to talk about their feelings toward the process. Many feel they are incapable of raising a child and therefore believe it unnecessary for the child to return. The program works with parents on this aspect, and also decides on a situational basis what families will receive material support in addition to emotional support. Workshops on commercial and technical skills are also offered to give participants knowledge to succeed in legal informal market activities, as it is difficult to directly change the existence of unemployment. In general, there are many positive aspects to the work of the GRP. It is difficult, however, for this type of program to reach the millions of children on the streets today. Therefore it is significant to continue research on methods of helping these youth. The issue was lost from public attention for a good amount of time but is now regaining recognition. In addition to support programs, the difficulty of problems such as poverty and socioeconomic level ultimately lay in the hands of the government.
The discussion of issues, from poverty to drug use, is greatly important in addressing how street children are a product of their context as well as how such factors shape the programs created to help them. This form of analysis provides a better understanding of a situation unknown to many around the world, one that continues to worsen as the population increases. Street children represent a pertinent problem that seemingly plagues Latin America. It is unjust to say, as many do, that it is they who are the problem. Rather, it is the fault of their environment, the world they are born into, and the fact that this “issue” is simply an outgrowth of numerous other problems that need attention within the region. The study of street children provokes one to consider the consequences of certain problems within society. Ultimately, addressing issues like poverty and abuse is the key to subsequently offering a better future for street children.
Apr. 6 2011 - 8:09 am
Asia only five years ago didn’t have any business schools in the top 20 in global rankings. Now, there are four: China Europe International Business School, or CEIBS, HKUST Business School, the Indian School of Business and the Indian Institute of Management. If John Quelch is successful, one of those is going to be moving even higher up the rungs soon.
In a sign of how China’s growing economic muscle is pulling the country’s business schools into the big leagues, too, John Quelch on Feb. 1 started as dean at CEIBS. Quelch, one of the most influential leaders in global business education, had previously spent 10 years helping to keep Harvard Business School at the top of the business education ranks as an associate dean. UK-born Quelch earlier ran the prestigious London Business School.
Quelch is starting off from a good base at CEIBS. The Shanghai-based school, a non-profit joint venture between the European Commission and the Chinese government, has the world’s 17th-ranked MBA and 18th-ranked EMBA program, according to the Financial Times. CEIBS alumni are in the country’s richest people, including at least three members of our 2011 Forbes Billionaires List, Zhu Yicai, Che Fengsheng and Wu Guangming.
Yet China, after getting rich early on from low-cost manufacturing, needs to continue to change its economy. CEIBS’ new leader aims to position to the school to help. “Instead of being focused on teaching what we already know, we know have to be focused on creating new knowledge that is China-based, because it’s absolutely clear that China is going to shift from a production economy to a knowledge economy,” Quelch said in a recent speech to the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club.
Although it’s hard to imagine today, China three decades ago barely had any business education. Much has changed since CEIBS opened its doors in 1994. Market reforms have created a huge demand for business skills in the world’s fastest-growing major economy, and hundreds of business degrees are on offer throughout the vast country.
“To set up a business school is a very easy thing to do in the sense that there’s a very low barrier to entry,” Quelch said. “If you think about it, as I used to say, all you need is a warm body and a piece of chalk, and a blackboard, you can set up a business school. If you’re setting up a business lab or a chemistry lab, you need a lot more capital investment up front. So, without getting into the whole permitting and approving issue in China, it’s very easy to get into the business school business.”
Making a mark internationally is another thing. CEIBS, besides its international perspective and standards, has advanced quickly in part because of the success of its EMBA problem. With 800 students this year, it is the world’s largest (versus only 200 in CEIBS’ MBA program). Some 80% of the students are Chinese; the other 20% can enroll in an English-language International EMBA catering to expatriates in China. It also offers short executive education class for the likes of IBM, GE, Coca-Cola, Eli Lilly, Emerson and Kraft.
EMBAs are a good place for a relatively young school like CEIBS to invest resources because they attract students who are already influential, or close to it. “The average age of people that are coming in is 38 years old in a good EMBA program,” Quelch says. So by the time a school is only 17 years old – as CEIBS is, “you have a mass of hugely important and highly placed people in the economy.” CEIBS generates about $30 million of fees from its EMBA program alone.
One change for Quelch from his old job at Harvard Business School: attention to rankings. “Coming from HBS, it’s a little bit strange for me to get into this whole ranking thing, because with a 105-year history and so on, and brand of awareness of 95 %, we didn’t really have to worry about ranking, whether we were one or two or three, it didn’t matter,” he said.
“But when you get down into the second tier, the ranking that you do achieve actually does have a lot of significance and impact in terms of driving MBA applications. And obviously the bigger the MBA application pool, the more selective we can be in terms of the submissions, and the better the students you get (and) the better the faculty you’re going to get in retain, because they want to teach good students and work with good students. So like it or not, ranking is important.”
China’s economic rise is shaking up business education all across Asia, not only China, Quelch says. “Why are these Asian business schools rising in the ranking? Obviously, the answer is the growth of the Chinese economy, and the room in China’s job market” for top
