Dayse Maria Valença Ferreira

Dayse Valença is enabling work cooperatives, comprised of some of Brazil's poorest citizens, to succeed in a competitive market economy, to truly and effectively manage themselves, and to integrate their success within the cooperatives into overall community improvement efforts.

Dayse Valença is promoting work cooperatives as viable solutions to Brazil's persistent unemployment problem. She is creating an environment in which work cooperatives can be entrepreneurial in their business practice, while simultaneously remaining true to the cooperative's ideal of self-governance and participatory membership.Dayse seeks to extend the role of work cooperatives beyond the realm of employment and income generation by using them as effective tools through which often-disenfranchised members can engage in successful, participative processes to surmount many of their pressing social problems.
Dayse's approach combines innovative training for emerging and existing cooperatives, linking cooperatives in similar industries to create professional networks, and pushing for important legislative change regarding the formation and regulation of cooperatives. Dayse's business management model enables members of small cooperatives to gain management skills, connect to markets, and govern themselves. Dayse provides training in basic marketing skills, planning, product development, legal issues, market research, pricing, and sales techniques. Unlike many other projects in the income generation arena in which the training is formulaic and finite, Dayse's model does not stop with training. She offers ongoing support and extensive follow-up tailored to each cooperative's needs. Dayse also orients members to the unique aspects of cooperative organizational management.
Dayse's idea is a significant step forward in the arena of creative income generation and microenterprise development. "Development isn't as simple as [providing credit and promoting microenterprises]. When poor entrepreneurs move past one relatively simple profitable activity, they usually can't connect with markets and don't have enough management capacity to run larger businesses. [T]here's got to be some kind of intervention that connects people to markets and adds management talent. And very few organizations have figured out how to do that on a cost-effective basis at scale." Dayse is providing precisely this missing link, and creating the conditions through which cooperatives' economic success will spill over into a series of social and community development activities.

Unemployment in Brazil averaged 5.7 percent of the workforce during 1997. According to a Brazilian labor union statistics institute, however, the unemployment rate in metropolitan São Paulo alone reached 16.5 percent in October 1997. Brazil's loosely defined informal sector has grown dramatically, largely as a result of increasing unemployment and ever diminishing job opportunities for Brazil's unskilled workers. Somewhere between 16.5 million and 30 million people depend on informal activities, such as working as washer women, domestic workers, seamstresses, and street vendors, among other occupations. A recent Applied Economic Research Institute study reported that 60 percent of the workers comprising Brazil's informal sector have less than eight years of formal education.Government and civic leaders have devoted much attention to these issues over the last several years, and many well-intentioned programs and policies have been launched. The promotion and establishment of small cooperatives, for instance, has recently become a common strategy for overcoming Brazil's tenacious and growing unemployment problem. These efforts, however, have not yielded the expected success, and in many cases the cooperative "boom" has resulted in the formation of "false cooperatives" with little to distinguish them from a corporation, and few direct benefits for members. Most of these cooperatives are run by management specialists and do not involve the members in the managerial and governing processes.
In general, training programs for members and potential members of a cooperative do not take into account the fact that these individuals are the managers of their own businesses. Training is done from the top down and resembles a simple delivery of information and instruments in language that is often incompatible with the level of education of the members. Typically, government institutions and nongovernmental organizations that provide training for cooperatives discourage them from becoming entrepreneurial efforts. There is also no systematic follow-up of the training offered at these institutions, which often results in early failure of cooperative endeavors.
As Dayse says, "There are only a few cooperatives that have removed the employee glasses of their associates and replaced them with entrepreneur's glasses. This leads me to believe that although there is a lot of incentive to establish new cooperative organizations, these will only be fulfilling their expectations when they have the effective participation of the members in the management of the enterprise."

Dayse first tested her ideas by setting up a washerwomen's cooperative in Pernambuco. She organized washerwomen into a cooperative, provided the appropriate training and support, and established partnerships with local businesses which served to link the washerwomen's cooperative to appropriate markets and provide pro bono services such as advertising. Dayse soon recognized the significant changes in the washerwomen's situation, both economically and socially. The cooperatives provided not only a more stable source of income, but also allowed the women to surmount other problems in a collective format, such as housing, child care, and overall community development. Perhaps most importantly, as the success of the cooperative increased women's self-esteem, domestic violence decreased, and women actively sought and attained community leadership positions.In 1995 Dayse moved to Rio de Janeiro to replicate and spread her approach. She founded the Business Education Center for Producer Cooperatives in the Morro do Cantagalo, a shantytown in Rio de Janeiro. The Center serves as the institutional base from which Dayse establishes links with existing cooperatives and community-based associations, conducts courses and follow-up sessions, creates partnerships with universities, businesses, government agencies and nongovernmental organizations, and trains multipliers who will spread the approach throughout Rio de Janeiro and other states.
Dayse provides tailored training and extensive follow-up for each cooperative until it is consolidated and on its own feet. Since these activities are particularly labor-intensive, she has developed didactic materials to enable others to take on key elements of the training sessions. She is also collaborating with well-established training institutes, such as the Federal University's job training program, to help spread her approach. Dayse has established strong partnerships with community associations, government agencies, religious groups, businesses, and others who can lend technical assistance and follow-up support.
Presently Dayse is working in ten low-income communities in Rio de Janeiro. She plans to add ten new cooperatives to the network per year for the next three years. She is carrying out market research and laying the groundwork to expand into new industries, such as gardening and domestic work. Dayse is also identifying "multiplying agents" from within existing successful cooperatives who can play a vital role in spreading her approach on a national level.
Furthermore, Dayse is creating "thematic networks"–professional associations of work cooperatives within the same industry–to promote the integration, discussion, and resolution of common problems that small cooperatives face. Through these networks, members of cooperatives can share information, experiences and advice, pool resources and expertise, and establish standards and quality control measures for their industry. The networks will allow cooperative members to identify new challenges and tap into each other's experiences to solve them, as colleagues from any professional association would.
Finally, Dayse is actively pushing for changes in the government's regulation of cooperative formation, registration, and maintenance. Dayse is seeking to undo the bureaucratic straitjacket that presently restricts citizens from organizing and managing their own cooperatives. She has conducted an analysis of the current legislation governing cooperatives, and has submitted a series of recommendations for modifying the laws, which is currently under review in Brasilia.

Dayse is the daughter of a truck driver and a housewife. One of seven children, she experienced the hardships of an economically restricted life in the interior of Pernambuco. When her father lost his job, three of her brothers had to leave school and begin work to help raise the family.When she was fourteen years old, Dayse was introduced to an even poorer community than her own, and she convinced three school friends to become involved in addressing the community's most pressing needs. She negotiated with the nuns at her school and obtained permission to use a room by the chapel in which to hold meetings and activities. Dayse and her friends designed and implemented an adult literacy project and a recreation program for children. She also helped the elderly obtain the pensions they deserved, and fought for the construction of sewage and drainage systems and for the community's right to land titles.
At nineteen, Dayse won a scholarship to study cooperative movements in Sweden. She spent over three years in Sweden, during which time she was able to broaden her perspective and see the possibilities for significant social change she could spur in Brazil. Upon her return to Brazil's northeast, Dayse began dedicating her life to diminishing poverty through the establishment of work cooperatives.