SAO PAULO, Brazil — A forerunner of the Perpetual Education Fund that was announced Churchwide in 2001, has been working in Brazil for the past 17 years, and has helped Church members gain significant posts in major companies.

Marcos Barbosa and his family will improve their future through the Perpetual Education Fund.

Photo courtesy Brazil North Area

Students in the Petrolina Brazil Stake are taking a course dealing with inspection and quality control. They are becoming experts in inspection and care of locally grown fruit and food products. Their education is being provided by the PEF.

The Perpetual Education Fund, made up of donations from established members, is administered by the Church to provide education loans to promising young people in developing nations who otherwise would not be able to break the cycle of poverty.

It is adding optimism to the word "future" among young people in this nation where 70 percent of those students who are being helped by the current fund earn less than U.S. $85 a month, and 22 percent are unemployed.

Those who are helped by the Perpetual Education Fund will in all likelihood increase their incomes fourfold. Those who obtain graduate degrees will do much better, based on past experience. And past experience is available in Brazil where a program similar to the PEF has operated for about 17 years. In this program, approximately 65 students have taken advantage of the MBA Program through Brigham Young University since the late 1980s. Now they are well-employed in top positions in Brazil. Looking at their positions is a look into what PEF students might do in another 15 years.

Directing the fund's benefits in Brazil are Duke and Alice Neal Cowley. Brother Cowley, former president of the Brazil Curitiba Mission, and Sister Cowley work in the area office, speak fluent Portuguese and have many years experience in this type of work.

"I have been working about 17 years with several former mission presidents, former missionaries, and many good people with a fund in Brazil that we started for returned missionaries," said Elder Cowley. "When the PEF came into being in October 2001, we were concerned with what was going to become of our group of about 200 university students. In the process of working with Elders Richard Cook and John K. Carmack (directors of the Perpetual Education Fund), we received a call to come to Brazil to help implement this new program."

Among the challenges they faced was learning about the differences in the educational systems, entrance requirements and the job opportunities in Brazil, they said.

"We try to fit all of this local information into the plan that comes from [Utah's] Wasatch Front. Sometimes this is not easy."

They help coordinate the job resources portion of Welfare Services through the Church Educational System and the ecclesiastical leaders as it applies to the PEF. They talk to applicants, resolve problems, and provide translated PEF material. Their work is truly the gospel in action, said members of the Brazil South Area presidency, Elders Neil L. Andersen, Darwin B. Christenson and Paulo Grahl.

Brazil accounts for 25 percent of the PEF students worldwide and has a good base of leadership that makes the program work. Three PEF plans are offered: 1. Local vocational and technical training on a university level, 2. Local general university study and 3. An MBA program in which participants attend BYU. Examples of those currently in the program illustrate how the fund is making a difference.

• Alex Dantas from Salvador, Bahia, received a mission call a year after his baptism, just as he was beginning the fourth and final year of studies in social communications at a government university in Bahia. "Upon return, after two years, the university would not allow me to finish my final year," he said. "This was very painful for my parents who had invested their entire lives in making sure, although we were very poor, that my sisters and I would be prepared to enter the government university.

"I also found my family with many financial problems. College graduation became only a hope of my past. Today, however, thanks to the PEF, I have returned to college and am in my third year of journalism."

He was awarded a medallion of honor this year by his professors for top scholarship.

"I am thankful to my Father in Heaven for all of the saints throughout the world and for the goodness of those who make this fund possible. I would love to embrace each and express my sincere thanks."

• Adriano de Moura, 19, is in his fifth semester in computer sciences at the University Anhembi Morumbi.

"From the first time I saw a computer I knew I wanted to work in this area," he said. "When I was in my last year of our government high school I was offered the opportunity to take the entrance exams for the university and passed. But my family was very poor, and I knew they could never pay for my studies.

"I lived in Juquitiba, 70 kilometers (43 miles) from Sao Paulo. I continued to work hard on my family's small farm. I took care of the animals, yard and stables. To be able to someday leave this work was only a dream. But I prayed for the Lord's help with my goals and my future."

Through the PEF, he said, "I was admitted to the university. I still work every day until 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, then I walk one and a quarter miles on a dirt road to the bus station, and take a long bus ride, arriving at 7 p.m. at my school. I study until 11 p.m., then board the bus and take the long ride and walk home, arriving in the early hours of the morning. My dreams are nearly realized and I will be blessed to have a career in computers very soon, thanks to the PEF."