Early Childhood First Project

The Early Childhood First Project is a social development initiative carried out by Petrobras and UNESCO in Brazil, which intends to improve the public policies and social welfare services focused on early childhood (from 0 to 6 year-olds) and pregnant women. 

The project targets the capacity-building of the representatives from 210 civil society organizations (CSOs) in 15 municipalities distributed in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Espírito Santo. In addition to at least one city in the states of Rio Grande do Norte and Sergipe.

The project has three stages: 

1. The first stage has the objective of identifying the best practices in CSOs working in the area of early childhood.
2. The second stage aims at recognizing the best practices focused on early childhood and pregnant women. 
3. The third stage aims to carry out an external assessment of the project.

The criteria for selecting the locations of the project requires that the city has Petrobras businesses and also the social welfare by the CSOs focused on early childhood. This selection will be after the elaboration of the project’s teaching material in 2021. 

In case it is not possible to select all 210 CSOs in 15 municipalities, the initiative will extend its activities to other locations. 

In 2021, the project provided:

• A 40-hour classroom training divided in 32 hours of specific content related to early childhood, and 8 hours on adapting the organizations to the Legal Framework on Early Childhood, which is the popular name of the national law 13.019/2014. 
• A remote training provided through the digital platform from the Ministry of Citizenship website (Ministério da Cidadania) with the same content of the 40-hour classroom training. 
   

The CSOs acting on social welfare provide public services. They have a complementary role in the direct action of the State. For this reason, they are strategic partners and co-responsible for guaranteeing social rights to society. 

The norms of social welfare policies allow the CSOs to provide some of the services, programmes and projects foreseen within the set of social welfare policy provisions. They can receive public resources or from other sources (donations, financial incomes, events, etc.).

The civil society organizations that perform social welfare functions in Brazil comprise the Private Social Welfare Network of the Universal Social Welfare System in Brazil (Sistema Único de Assistência Social – SUAS).