Opinion: The long shadow of COVID-19 on extreme poverty – Devex

By Shameran Abed | Executive Director, BRAC International This article originally appeared in Devex on October 27, 2020. Today, the world faces a greater challenge than any before as the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to undo years of progress in poverty eradication while exacerbating preexisting inequalities and exposing the fragility of our systems. At the beginning … Continued

Policies and Practices to Enhance the Gender Transformative Potential of Multi-faceted Social Protection Programs

Anoushka Bhari and Sonia Laszlo, McGill University (2020) ABSTRACT This scoping paper documents current practices used by Graduation Program practitioners to produce meaningful and sustainable improvements in women’s wellbeing. To do so, it builds on the theory of change in Rao and Kelleher (2005) and adapted by Hillenbrand (2015) and identify practices that affect change … Continued

TED Talk | Audacious Project – 4 Ways to End Extreme Poverty

Approximately 700 million people worldwide currently live in extreme poverty, a state of severe financial and social vulnerability that robs many of hope and dignity. BRAC, the world’s largest NGO, began a sustainable, multifaceted intervention called the Graduation approach in 2002. Since then, it has helped over nine million people escape extreme poverty. Now, Shameran … Continued

BRAC UPGI Receives Catalytic Investment as 2020 Audacious Project to Lift 4.6 Million Households from Extreme Poverty by 2026

By Courtney Calardo, Head of Communications | BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative Download Full Press Release New York, NY June 18, 2020 — Today, BRAC, a Global South-led NGO that combats inequality and poverty around the world, was announced as one of this year’s Audacious Project grantees. BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative (UPGI) will receive more a … Continued

Empowering Women to Escape Extreme Poverty – UNDP

By Nazia Moqueet | Senior Technical Advisor & Courtney Calardo, Senior Communications Manager | BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative This article originally appeared on UNDP’s blog on March 17, 2020. While both women and men are affected by extreme poverty, women have a considerably harder time escaping poverty, as their rights are not often protected. They … Continued

Aperçu du Graduation (Français) / Graduation Overview (French)

Qu’est-ce que l’approche de « Graduation » ? L’approche de progression mise en oeuvre par BRAC est un ensemble d’interventions complet, limité dans le temps, intégré et séquencé qui vise à permettre aux foyers extrêmement pauvres ou très pauvres de développer une certaine résilience socio-économique afin de sortir progressivement de la pauvreté.

Graduation-Based Social Protection for Cambodia’s Extreme Poor – UNDP

Author: Dr. Stephanie Levy, London School of Economics (LSE) This study explores activist approaches to social protection, through interventions that tackle poverty by addressing the multiple dimensions of economic exclusion of the rural extreme poor in Cambodia. It explores the potential of so-called graduation packages, which consist of a combination of transfers of productive assets, vocational … Continued

Eliminating Extreme Poverty: Comparing the Cost-Effectiveness of Livelihood, Cash Transfer, and Graduation Approaches

Munshi Sulaiman, Nathanael Goldberg, Dean Karlan, Aude de Montesquiou (December 2016) Targeted interventions that sustainably improve the lives of poor people will be a critical component in eliminating extreme poverty by 2030. The poorest households tend to be physically and socially isolated and face disadvantages across multiple dimensions, which makes moving out of extreme poverty … Continued

Opinion: How to find a resilient solution to extreme poverty – Devex

By Emily Coppel | Director of Communications, BRAC USA This article originally appeared in Devex on October 17, 2016. In the last two weeks, the devastation in Haiti from Hurricane Mathew has grown more and more shocking. Families woke up to see their neighborhoods in tatters, and the number of recorded deaths has risen to … Continued

Mainstreaming Graduation into Social Protection Floors – International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth

By Harshani Dharmadasa, Ian Orton and Lauren Whitehead With the recent adoption of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), eradicating extreme poverty presents a major challenge for governments worldwide. Despite recent progress, 902 million people remain in extreme poverty. To attain the right to social protection for people living in extreme poverty and, simultaneously, … Continued