
A Commitment to Society
At Itaú and Unibanco our private social investment strategies prioritize the improvement of education and access to culture
The social and cultural investments undertaken by the main institutes and foundations at Itaú Unibanco embody the commitment of the institution to the major challenges of the sustainable development of society. Both institutions have a long history of support for social and cultural projects, and together they will bring considerable benefit to society, given their complementary activities. In the social area, Instituto Unibanco and Fundação Itaú Social invest in education – the primary tool for the training of citizens and the sustainable development of Brazil, while the mission of Itaú Cultural Institute and Instituto Moreira Salles is to democratize access to culture through various cultural actions.
These four organizations operate independently, but have similar strategies, as they seek to establish partnerships with governments and civil society organizations to broaden the scope of their initiatives.
Itaú and Unibanco invested approximately R$159 million in social and cultural investments in 2008.
The following pages have more details about the activities of Itaú Unibanco in these fields, as well as its main achievements in 2008.
Fundação Itaú Social
A focus on education
Education is the pathway to Brazil’s sustainable development. Fundação Itaú Social (the “Foundation”), created by Itaú in 2000, is designed to create, implement and spread methodologies which improve public policies in education and the evaluation of social projects.
The Foundation operates throughout Brazil in partnership with all government levels (federal, state and municipal), the private sector and civil society organizations. The establishment of strategic alliances brings together various outlooks and approaches, which contributes to the joint development of solutions for the demands of the Brazilian people. It is also a way to ensure the durability of its actions and to gain scale, resulting in a broad scope of activities.
Fundação Itaú Social has also invested in the growth of inter-sectoral policies, focusing its efforts on areas such as education, culture, sports, welfare and health to help provide comprehensive education for children and adolescents.
Sharing projects with the public sector and other partners ensures support and brings an identity to local projects, in addition to providing a wider range of actions which meet local demand and influence public policy. Partners in education include the United Nations Fund for Children (UNICEF), the National Union of Municipal Education Administrators (Undime) and Canal Futura TV, while the Center for Studies and Research in Education, Culture and Community Action (Cenpec) performs the technical coordination of various projects.
In addition to outside partners, the Foundation is also supported by the bank’s business operations, as various areas help to grow its social programs. The branch and consumer finance outlets network also plays an important role in publicizing programs, which helps bring them closer to local communities. These internal alliances are strengthened by the conceptual, strategic and operational alignment between the Foundation and the bank’s internal areas.
The group of actions and programs that the Foundation develops and supports is focused on comprehensive schooling, education management, the development of reading and writing skills, better opportunities for the social insertion of young people and spreading the culture of the economic evaluation of social projects. These areas of work are implemented through different programs:
Reading and Writing: the Writing the Future program has been exemplary in the transformation of public schooling policy, turning Writing the Future into the Olympics of the Portuguese language. In 2008 it became part of the Education Development Plan of the Ministry of Education, allowing these Olympics to reach 5,445 cities, representing 98% of Brazilian municipalities. The 2008 edition was attended by approximately six million elementary school students, 55,000 schools and 130,000 teachers. In 2007, 15,000 schools took part.
Comprehensive Education: in 2008 the implementation of regional workshops and a major national seminar strengthened the discussion of the implementation of comprehensive education in Brazil.
Education Management: Managing schools is a major challenge for schooling performance and includes micro aspects of daily life at school and teaching-related work, through supervisory and school administration bases, up to the macro levels of public schooling management and policy departments.
To strengthen education administration skills at various levels of the public school system and to enrich and broaden the debate on the subject, the Foundation runs two programs in this area: Municipal Education Improvement and Excellence in Education Management.
Municipal Education Improvement: as part of its efforts to provide ongoing training for municipal managers, Regional Education Plan meetings were held for training and monitoring the implementation of Educational Action Plans in 26 municipalities in Piauí State, 25 in Goiás State and 14 municipalities in the interior of São Paulo State. There were also 30 training workshops using the Brazil Today application, which prepares administrators to diagnose local conditions.
Excellence in Education Management: this project includes three initiatives, two studies and a pilot project implemented in ten schools in São Paulo in partnership with the São Paulo State Department of Education. The studies, which deal with educational reform in New York and its applicability to Brazil and charter schools, will be published. Over a three-year period, ten public schools in São Paulo State will be used to develop two elements of reform implemented in New York: leveraging educational management by training teaching coordinators and the practice of coaching, and the approach and involvement of families in everyday school life. The content and didactics of Portuguese Language and Mathematics courses will receive specific training through technical coordination provided by the Fernand Braudel Institute.
Youth: throughout 2008 we systemized the methodology of social intervention for young people from low-income suburban areas which resulted in the publication of Urban Youth – a Systemized Methodology, which was presented and discussed at a seminar on public policies for young people.
Economic Assessment of Social Projects: the assessing of social projects and public policies is a subject that is becoming increasingly important in the quest to improve social actions and investments. In this context, the economic assessment aspect has become an important tool to support project management and improvements, and optimize the allocation of resources and facilitate the provision of reports to donors, participants and the general public.
Economic assessment combines two complementary steps: the impact and the calculation of income. The first main goal is to show causality between the completed project and the results, while the financial return on investment compares the project with the benefits generated over the life of its participants.
Fundação Itaú Social directed efforts at spreading the knowledge of assessment and promoted seven courses and four workshops for 400 people who received electronic guides with information on the subject. Thanks to its major involvement with the issue, the Foundation has received invitations from groups such as Fundação João Pinheiro, the Minas Gerais State Government, the Rio Grande do Sul State Department of Justice, Labour and Social Development and steel company Arcelor Mittal, based in the State of Espírito Santo, to give courses and share knowledge on the subject.
Key Challenges and Achievements in 2008
- Increase teaching skills and understanding in reading and writing through the implementation of the Portuguese Language Olympics – Writing the Future.
- Encourage the establishment of comprehensive education through the Monitoring Plan for social organizations – the Itaú-Unicef Award and a national discussion on the policy of comprehensive education for children and adolescents.
- Expansion of opportunities for the social insertion of young people, with the systematic methodology of working with the young and the implementation of a National Seminar on youth policies.
- Spreading the culture of the economic assessment of social projects, with courses, seminars and evaluations.
- Strengthening skills in public school administration by spreading the use of the local conditions diagnostic tool and creating new projects in the area of educational management.
- Mobilizing and encouraging employees to become involved with a social cause through programs such as Itaú Volunteer, Itaú Solidarity, Itaú Child and Community Today.
Fundação Itaú Social maintains partnerships with organizations that develop important projects aligned with its own operating principles, such as the City Apprentice School Association, Fundação Dorina Nowill, Canal Futura TV and the Solidarity Literacy Program, which in turn helps improve the performance of these groups themselves.
2008 highlights:
- Integrated School Program: this project from the city of Belo Horizonte expands the educational journey in the municipal network, through partnerships with NGOs and universities, plus public and private services available around the school. The Foundation has been a project partner since 2004, helping train Education and Social Services departmental technicians, which contributes to this important element of comprehensive education.
- Reorientation of the Goiás Curriculum: through a participatory process involving the entire network, a central curriculum was developed for Grade Two. Through the partnership the curriculum extends in didactic sequences across all subjects.
- School Volunteer Award: a Radio Bandeirantes project that has been supported by the Foundation since 2002. It recognizes, encourages, publicizes and awards teaching in public schools and individuals that encourage volunteer work among their students.
- Vitae Partners: the Vitae Partners Support Program for Technical and Agrotechnical Teaching, a series of annual competitions for project awards, was established in 1996 by Vitae - Support for Culture, Education and Social Promotion, whose goal is to contribute to the improvement of professional education at the technical level. The Foundation joined the partnership in 2008, bringing together the Technology Support Foundation, program management, Fundação Lemann and other institutions.
Instituto Unibanco
Supporting Youth
O Instituto Unibanco (the “Institute”) believes that to contribute to the sustainable development of the country it is essential to invest in youth and address Brazil’s educational shortcoming: less than 16% of the economically active population has 11 years of schooling. Created in 1982, the Institute develops actions in partnership with governments and civil society organizations, whose goal is to create conditions that allow vulnerable young people to finish their studies armed with sufficient knowledge and course content to qualify them for the job market, for their personal life and as a citizen.
In 2008 the Institute focused its social investments on the expansion of social projects of its own design, such as Future Young and Among Youth, and almost doubled the number of beneficiaries from the previous year, going from 84,595 kids helped in 2007 to 150,000 in 2008. These projects are implemented through public-private partnerships with state governments responsible for high school education.
The Institute also establishes partnerships with non-governmental organizations throughout the country, which helps qualify their high school-related projects.
All initiatives supported and developed by the bank are constantly evaluated for their results and impacts and meet three main guidelines: Efficiency, as the projects must provide excellent value for money; Efficacy, as the initiatives must reach the targets they set; and Effectiveness, because the actions chosen must have the desired positive impact on the lives of the beneficiaries.
Instituto Unibanco's projects
The Institute’s main projects are Future Young and Among Youth.
Through these projects, investments are made in improving the quality of high school education, resulting in better school performance and lower dropout rates.
Future Young offers technical and financial conditions so the school community can carry out projects to improve performance and reduce dropouts. In achieving these goals, the project has a positive effect on the personal and professional futures of young people and their families, as it increases the number of employment opportunities and improves the participants’ educational and cultural skills.
Future Young was implemented in 2007 in 4 schools in São Paulo. In 2008 it was extended to 48 schools: 25 in Porto Alegre (RS), 20 in Belo Horizonte (MG) and 3 in São Paulo (SP) – and involves 77,000 students.
The Among Youth program, in partnership with State Secretariats of Education, universities and institutions connected with education, seeks to address the challenge of providing high school students with primary school education skills, without which their performance at this level of education is adversely affected. The strategy is to provide additional educational assistance to public school students from grade one to high school through a mentoring program developed by undergraduate university students. The goals are to improve student performance and help reduce dropout rates, as well as help improve the training of future teachers.
In 2008 Among Youth involved 78 schools in Rio de Janeiro (RJ), Vitória (ES) and Juiz de Fora (MG), reaching 13,000 students and 396 university students. In 2009 the project will reach 205 schools in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo and the Federal District. As a low cost and easily disseminated technology, the Government of Espírito Santo is studying to adopt it as a policy in 2009.
The Institute’s Young Apprentice Project promotes the training of high school students to be apprentices for the formal job market. Non-profit groups receive technical and financial support to prepare public high school boys and girls aged 16-24 for employment, primarily in schools which benefit from the Future Youth and Among Youth programs.
The Institute also has the Tomas Zinner Center for Studies – a facility to validate educational principles and technologies to be applied to projects which seek to reduce school dropouts and improve the quality of education and employability of young people, particularly under Brazil’s Law of Learning.
Project support and sponsorship
Instituto Unibanco supports groups that develop social actions focused on the human development of youth, including formal education, professional training, education and social responsibility. This support transcends the financial investment to become a true partnership.
Projects supported include the Environmental Education Centres, created to make young people aware of environmental preservation and the use of natural resources, and to provide subsidies to teachers to be used for the school.
The Institute and the Unibanco group
In addition to the Volunteer Program, the Institute runs selective waste collection in the group’s buildings and conducts the selection and management of social projects which receive financial support from Unibanco Private Bank’s Social Investment Funds, which allocate part of their earnings to social actions in supplementary education, allowing investors to generate returns by helping provide opportunities for children and adolescents to receive training.
Other Social Investments
Itaú Holding
São Paulo Social and Environmental Stock Exchange: for the fifth consecutive year Banco Itaú Holding Financeira S.A. donated 5% of its listing fees to social projects, allowing funding to be provided to 14 projects around Brazil.
Unibanco
- Caravan of Sport: run by TV sports channel ESPN Brasil, this social project serves as an educational tool for children and adolescents in the interior of Brazil. The project was sponsored by the bank in 2008, and funds were invested in 11 cities in the States of Bahia, Sergipe, Pernambuco, Alagoas, Mato Grosso do Sul and Amazonas.
- Clube A: since 2003 the bank has been offering retired customers or employees of any of the group’s companies the opportunity to join Clube A, which offers recreation and entertainment for the elderly. Clube A uses social, cultural and leisure activities, and the development of employee solidarity to improve the lives of retirees.
Itaú BBA
Education Projects
- “Vitae Partners” Support Program for Technical and Agrotechnical Teaching: created by Vitae - Support for Culture, Education and Social Promotion, the program is designed to disseminate and implement modernization and technology courses in technical teaching and Agrotechnical schools. In 2008 Itaú BBA financially supported this program. Vitae Partners consists of Itaú BBA, Vitae, Instituto Itaú Social, Fundação Lemann, Instituto Unibanco and FAT.
- Solidarity in Literacy: a program which gives adults and young people access to regular terms of primary schooling. In 2008 Itaú BBA allocated funds that contributed to the teaching of 1,000 students and 40 teachers in four cities in North Eastern Brazil. The figure also includes the Seeing project, which performs eye exams and distributes glasses to students.
- Acaia Sagarana: supports and encourages young people from low income homes who have good school grades. In 2008 the program gave lessons in English, mathematics, history, geography, physics, chemistry and biology, thanks to a donation from Itaú BBA. This year 12 students passed the exam to give them full scholarships for the Anglo College entrance exam preparation course.
- Fundação Getúlio Vargas Scholarship: with financial help from the bank, this schooling credit program helps Business Administration students pay for their studies. In 2008 Itaú BBA allocated monies to the FGV Scholarship Fund.
- Vera Cruz Educational Institution Assistance: Itaú BBA allocated funds for projects for 350 pre-school children and 430 kids up to grade four (780 in total), 92 teachers (80 from pre-school and 12 from elementary school), plus eight teaching coordinators and directors.
- ARCO – Benevolent Association: provides education for children and young people aged up to 22 from the outskirts of São Paulo. In 2008 Itaú BBA donated money to this organization, which helped support two projects: “Digital Inclusion” and “Art in Wood”.
- Partners in Education Program: a partnership between businesses and schools which helps benefit students and educators by improving the quality of teaching. Itaú BBA became involved in this program in late 2008, when it signed a protocol of intent with the Parent Teacher Associations of two state schools in São Paulo: Romeu de Moraes and Professor Manoel Ciridião Buarque. In 2008 money was provided to assess the infrastructure and teaching needs of these schools.
Supporting the Community
- Association for Assistance to Children with Heart Disease and Heart Transplants (ACTC): helps children with serious heart disease from all over Brazil and neighbouring countries, accompanied by family members, to receive treatment at the Heart Institute in São Paulo. In 2008 Itaú BBA provided funds to ACTC, which allowed the organization to assist over 1,000 children and their accompanying family members.
- São Paulo Institute Against Violence: in 2008 Itaú BBA donated R$120,000 to the Institute. One of the key improvements made was the implementation of a new digital Crime Report Phone Line, used by people to help prevent crimes. This digital service allowed it to handle, assess and refer an average of 14,000 reports in six months, against 9,000 in the six months prior to going digital.
- Instituto Brasil Solidário: a non-profit organization which develops social programs in disadvantaged and low human development index communities. In 2008 Itaú BBA provided funds for Instituto Brasil Solidário to conduct social and environmental actions in needy communities situated along the route of the Rally dos Sertões car race.
- Praça Victor Civita: Itaú BBA contributed funds for the construction of this square in São Paulo city’s western zone. The land had been contaminated by heavy metals and other toxic substances from the burning of household and hospital waste on this site for 40 years. The Abril media group and various government agencies worked together to find an economically viable and environmentally sustainable solution to rehabilitate the area for public use, without posing any risk to visitors. In November 2008 the city of São Paulo officially opened the Praça Victor Civita - Open Space of Sustainability.
Instituto Itaú Cultural
Promoting Brazilian Art
Founded in 1987, Itaú Cultural Institute (the “Institute”) seeks to develop and organize processes which help create and spread knowledge of Brazilian arts and broaden access to culture in all regions of Brazil. In its two decades of operation the Institute has become a benchmark for addressing, promoting and spreading Brazilian art and culture.
Throughout 2008 the Institute organized approximately 300 cultural events all over Brazil, as well as 40 international events undertaken in Argentina, Chile, China, Mexico and Uruguay. Offering free and unrestricted access, these activities attracted a wide range of people, from students to critics, curators, artists, journalists and third sector representatives. The activities offered at the Institute’s headquarters in São Paulo were attended by about 273,000 people in 2008.
The activities are presented by different areas of the cultural sphere and are designed to run for several years. The Institute is also responsible for managing the entire collection of Itaú Holding’s approximately 3,500 works of art and offering various programs on research, content production, mapping, promotion and dissemination of intellectual-artistic events in Brazil and abroad.
All Instituto Itaú Cultural activities are free, which allows more people to experience its products and projects. The Institute does not limit its activities to urban areas. It also invests in distance activities to give its content even greater reach.
Itaú Cultural areas of activity
- Development and organization of cultural processes and generation of knowledge about the Brazilian arts.
- Understanding of cultural practices through broadening access to culture.
- Promotion of social participation.
- Encouraging research and production of art and technology.
- Encouragement of emerging talent through Itaú Cultural Directions, a long-running nationwide program.
- Virtual activities through its website to help expand the reach, research and discussion on art and culture in Brazil.
Main achievements in 2008
- Fourth Itaú Cultural Biennial of Art and Technology.
- Distribution of 42,028 products, including books, magazines and DVDs, to cultural and educational institutions throughout the country.
- 20 Bossa Nova programs distributed to 668 broadcasters in 526 Brazilian cities
- Itaú Modern - Art in Brazil 1911-1980, an art book featuring 273 works of modern art from the Itaú collection.
- Re-launching on DVD of the 15 documentaries in the Brazilian Historic Panorama series.
- Strategies for Entering and Exiting Modernity: Art in Brazil 1911-1980 - an exposition of the Itaú collection at MASP, attended by 110,417 visitors.
- Visionaries - Audiovisual in Latin America - a display held in La Paz (Bolivia) and Buenos Aires (Argentina).
- Public launching of the Itaú Cultural Directions program in the Visual Arts and Education, Culture and Art categories.
- The Itaú Cultural website had approximately 8.6 million visits, while the online encyclopedia of visual arts, theatre and literature had over five million visits.
Instituto Moreira Salles
Guardian of national history
Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS) was created in 1990 to promote and develop cultural programs and activities focused on safeguarding, preserving and making available collections of Brazilian arts and history, allowing Brazilian culture to be more accessible to the general public through four areas of art.
IMS designs, implements and runs its own projects independently from the bank. Priority is given to medium and long-term activities, including regular programs which allow the public to broaden their cultural knowledge.
In 2008 thousands of people attended IMS’s 817 events in its cultural center, including exhibitions, courses, workshops, children’s programming and the launching of publications. IMS has centres located in three Brazilian States: one in Rio de Janeiro, which also houses a Technical Photography and Music Archive; two in Minas Gerais (Belo Horizonte and Poças de Caldas); and one in São Paulo.
IMS is best known for its work with photography. It houses over 550,000 images and dozens of photography collections, and has an extensive collection of photographs of Brazil in the 19th century, plus music recordings and literature and works of art including drawings, ink and watercolours.
Instituto Moreira Salles Areas of Activity
- Photography
- Literature
- Fine Art
- Brazilian Music
Instituto Moreira Salles
Main achievements in 2008
- Acquisition of the Martha and Érico Stickel collection, featuring images of the 19th century.
- Presentation of dozens of exhibits.
- Over 1,000 film screenings.
- Launch of book about writer Machado de Assis, commemorating 100 years since his death.
Other Cultural Investments
Music
In 2008 Itaú launched the Itaúbrasil events platform, whose goal is to promote Brazilian culture and its most famous figures. The program’s first edition, which celebrated the 50th anniversary of Bossa Nova, began with a concert for 50,000 people on Ipanema Beach in Rio de Janeiro, and featured artists such as Milton Nascimento and the Jobim Trio, who later took the show to São Paulo and Belo Horizonte. An exposition of the 50th Anniversary of Bossa Nova was also held at the Oca facility in Ibirapuera Park in São Paulo, which had over 82,000 visitors.
The program also included the sponsorship of concerts designed especially for the occasion, which brought singers Roberto Carlos and Caetano Veloso together for the first time to honour Tom Jobim, as well as young artists who paid tribute to João Donato; the pairing of Miúcha with Os Cariocas; and four shows by João Gilberto, his first in Brazil for five years.
Itaúbrasil will run programs annually with a variety of themes and formats for each edition. The event is multi-faceted and can embrace music, visual arts, performing arts, film or any other significant form of Brazilian culture.
In addition to music, Itaú and Unibanco supported the spread of classical music by sponsoring the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra (Osesp). Itaú Personnalité sponsored a series of four concerts by the Orchestra, totalling 24 presentations, 22 of which were in the Sala São Paulo, and two in the Municipal Theatre of Rio de Janeiro. The target audience of these events was Personnalité customers in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The bank has been supporting the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra since 2003. In 2008 the bank sponsored a series of concerts at Sala São Paulo, and the Orchestra’s Brazil Tour, which visited 11 cities around the country.
Films
The Espaço Unibanco de Cinema and Unibanco Arteplex facilities comprise a network of movie theatres, located in several cities and dedicated to high-quality programming. In 2008 two new Espaço Unibanco de Cinema movie houses were opened: one in São Paulo (ten screens), and the other in Salvador (four screens). The network has 13 separate facilities featuring approximately 60 screens in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre, Fortaleza, Santos, Curitiba and Salvador.
Currently, all customers and employees of Itaú and Unibanco have a 50% discount at any Espaço Unibanco de Cinema and Unibanco Arteplex.
Literature
For the fifth consecutive year Unibanco was the main sponsor of the International Literary Festival of Paraty (Flip). Through its involvement the bank seeks to encourage reading and bring readers and writers closer together.
Recognized for the quality of the authors invited, the enthusiasm of the audience and the hospitality of the city, the Festival has been growing in popularity. In 2008 it honoured Machado de Assis, an event that brought together 40 authors and attracted about 20,000 people to the city of Paraty.
Other Sponsorships
Other sponsorships were undertaken in 2008 to support the expression of popular culture throughout Brazil. The objectives are to enhance the initiative of the communities where the bank operates and encourage social and cultural development in these regions.
In February three important events enjoyed Itaú’s support: the Festival of Nossa Senhora dos Navegantes, in Rio Grande do Sul, which is the country’s third largest religious festival and has been supported by Itaú for the past 28 years; the Salvador Carnival, which is the world’s largest street carnival according to the Guinness Book of Records; and in March it sponsored, for the eighth consecutive year, the Curitiba Theatre Festival. This was the 17th edition of the Festival, which is Brazil’s largest performing arts event.
Unibanco sponsored the first University Communication Festival, and continued its financial support to maintain the Criar Institute of TV, Film and New Media, which helps integrate young people from low income backgrounds into the employment market through a technical and socio-cultural training program. Unibanco also sponsored the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), as well as the São Paulo International Art Fair and the “Nicolas Antoine Taunay in Brazil” exhibit, both held at the National Museum of Fine Arts of Rio de Janeiro.
Itaú BBA
Itaú BBA makes independent investments in cultural and social projects. Following are its sponsorships for the year:
- Itaú BBA Photography Contest. Using the categories “Trees in Bloom,” Nature in Bloom” and “Crops in Bloom”, this long-running Itaú BBA contest awarded prizes to amateur and professional photographers from all over Brazil.
- Itaú BBA Avistar Photography Contest. Under the “Brazilian Birds” category, the competition awarded Brazil’s best images of birds photographed in the wild. The event was designed to stimulate the recording and conservation of birds in Brazil.
Projects undertaken through the Rouanet Law:
- Jewish Cultural Centre. This institution helps promote and strengthen cultural ties between the Jewish community and Brazilian society.
- Living History of Brazil. In this book historian Jorge Caldeira collected the stories of people who lived through key moments in Brazilian history, such as the Jesuit priest who documented the first mass held in São Paulo, and the letter from Brazil’s governor general, describing the arrival of the Dutch in Salvador. In 2008 Itaú BBA took on full sponsorship of the book, which was released the same year.
- São Paulo Museum of Modern Art. To celebrate the 60th anniversary of one of Brazil’s leading modern art museums, Itaú BBA sponsored Marcel Duchamp’s first solo exhibit in Latin America, which featured 120 works by the French-American artist.
- Acadêmicos do Grande Rio. Itaú BBA provided funds for this Samba School, which in the 2009 Carnival parade honoured the year of France in Brazil.


