Translating into Growth: Belt and Road helps social development in Brazil
[]

By CGTN’s Lucrecia Franco‍

With the Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese companies are not only eyeing economic cooperation overseas, but also social development. 
China’s State Grid Corporation, the world’s largest utility company and now owner of a majority stake in Brazil’s largest power distributor, is investing in social development in Brazil to help people from the favelas, or slums.
Its star project is a classical music ensemble called Mare of Tomorrow Orchestra, whose elite musicians all live in one of Rio de Janeiro’s most notorious favelas. 
Mare is a complex that combines 16 favelas or slums in the city’s north and has been militarized to stop the all-too-common shootouts between rival drug gangs. 
The orchestra usually rehearses at a school in the Mare complex, but when the situation gets too violent, it moves to the auditorium of its sponsor, China’s State Grid Brazil, in downtown Rio. 
Police officers arrest a suspected drug dealer after a shootout in a favela in Rio. /CFP Photo

Police officers arrest a suspected drug dealer after a shootout in a favela in Rio. /CFP Photo

Ramon Haddad, a State Grid Brazil vice-president, says the orchestra is the company’s main social sponsorship, amounting to some 200,000 US dollars per year.
Other than nurturing their music skills, the project also aims to enable those from the favelas to choose any career path they want.
A favela in Rio, with tall downtown buildings in the background. /CFP Photo

A favela in Rio, with tall downtown buildings in the background. /CFP Photo

“The Mare of Tomorrow orchestra brought me what I call ‘I can’. And ‘I can’ - meaning I can be what I wish - has made me decide that I want to be a musician and a psychologist,” said Isadora Barbosa, an 18-year-old cellist. 
State Grid Brazil has now involved some 2,000 young people in music classes and groups – a project that takes them from the chaos of the slums to the discipline needed to play Mozart.
Meanwhile, as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, Brazil is already welcoming Chinese banks to bolster trade between the two countries.
Rio de Janeiro-based lender Banco BBM - Brazil’s oldest financial institution founded in 1858 - is now controlled by China’s Bank of Communications and is the first financial joint-venture between Brazil and China. 
Anna Jaguaribe, director of the Institute for Brazil-China Studies, says that while China’s major banks have set up in Brazil, commodities are still dollar-dominated, meaning the introduction of the Chinese yuan is still a work in progress.
“It will be a facilitator in the extent it increases trade, it diversifies trade. If trade remains attached to certain amounts of staples it is difficult to shift the basis of the currency, but I think we are looking at prospects of change,” said Jaguaribe.
17342km

Related stories:

Translating into Growth: Belt and Road spurs China-New Zealand cooperation
Translating into Growth: Belt and Road promotes the Sino-UK relations
Translating into Growth: ‘Belt and Road’ refreshes Egypt’s ancient Silk Road role
Translating into Growth: Belt and Road puts Turkey on track towards the future
Translating into Growth: China and Turkey start direct trade in yuan and lira