Two women in Bangladesh go from living on less than 70 cents per day to becoming savvy entrepreneurs who are independently supporting their families. BRAC’s ‘Graduation’ approach to ending poverty gives women living in desperate circumstances the tools and opportunities to improve their lives.
Poverty can be overcome, and the benefits last for generations. Alo Rani (‘light queen’ in Bangla) overcame poverty 18 years ago. Her children and grandchildren continue to shine, generations later. BRAC’s Ultra-Poor Graduation programme has supported more than 2 million households in Bangladesh like Alo Rani’s to overcome poverty. This is her Graduation story. BRAC’s … Continued
This article originally appeared in InDepthNews on October 14, 2021. DHAKA (IDN) — It is time we start treating extreme poverty as the global emergency it is. This International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, October 17, we are looking at 100 million more people being forced into extreme poverty by the end of 2021 … Continued
By Shameran Abed | Executive Director, BRAC International This article originally appeared in Project Syndicate on July 26, 2021. From 1990 to 2019, the number of people living in extreme poverty (according to the World Bank threshold of $1.90 per day) plummeted, from 1.9 billion to 648 million. COVID-19 has reversed much of this progress. … Continued
Clare Balboni, Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess, Upaasna Kaul (December 2015) A livelihood programme providing productive assets and skills training to the poorest women in Bangladesh village economies helps them move into more stable self-employment and achieves significant reductions in poverty…
Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess, Narayan Das, Selim Gulesci, Imran Rasul, Munshi Sulaimany (March 2016) We study how women’s choices over labor activities in village economies correlate with poverty and whether enabling the poorest women to take on the activities of their richer counterparts can set them on a sustainable trajectory out of poverty…
Wameq A Raza, Ellen Van de Poel (April 2016) Evidence shows that ultra-poor households are typically unable to participate in mainstream poverty alleviation programmes. In response, an international NGO called BRAC in Bangladesh implemented the Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction: Targeted Ultra-Poor (CFPR: TUP) programme that explicitly targets those living below…
Clare Balboni, Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess, Maitreesh Ghatak and Anton Heil (March 2020) There are two views as to why people stay poor. The equal opportunity view emphasizes that differences in individual traits like talent or motivation make poor people choose low productivity jobs. The poverty traps view emphasizes that access to opportunities depends on … Continued
See how BRAC is reaching the poorest with an innovative set of interventions that creates a ladder out of extreme poverty.
When Marlowe Popes joined the Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative in 2017 as BRAC Field Manager for the DOLE Graduation pilot, he never imagined he’d be guiding his team and almost two thousand project participants through a pandemic. When one of the world’s longest running lockdowns began in the Philippines due to COVID-19, Marlowe’s team was tasked with … Continued