BRAC’s Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative is working to help scale up Graduation through governments with an audacious goal of reaching 21 million people. To reach that scale, we are continuously consulting the literature and gathering feedback from deeply experienced implementers at BRAC and beyond on how to scale more effectively.
We recently engaged in an exercise to identify the most essential components of the Graduation approach. To do this, we conducted an evidence review and gathered internal feedback from our practitioners to gut-check the findings.
What emerged are three must-have elements that we’re calling the Graduation Essentials, or “ABCs”: a productive asset (or lump sum cash), support for basic needs, and coaching that unlocks agency, know-how, and hope.
Why do we need “essentials”?
We needed essentials for two key reasons. One, in the past, some have interpreted Graduation to mean any program with a set of components designed to alleviate poverty. This misinterpretation has led to large-scale implementation of programs called “Graduation” that do not feature critical components of the approach and are, therefore, unlikely to have similar impacts. We wanted to clarify what Graduation is, and is not.
Second, budget-constrained implementers – and governments especially – need to know which elements of this multifaceted approach to prioritize in their scaling agendas.
They need to know the essentials not only to ensure the highest return on investment possible, but also to maximize feasibility for scale. Research shows that simpler programs are easier to scale – this has been demonstrated across a large number of approaches and evidence from the world’s foremost scaling experts concludes that it’s just easier to make mistakes and hit roadblocks when implementing complex programs.
The idea of Graduation was – and still is – to tackle multiple barriers to overcoming poverty together. But now, with nearly 30 randomized evaluations on the Graduation approach over almost two decades of implementation, we not only have the experience but also the evidence to know which barriers are the most important to tackle for households to escape the poverty trap.
The Graduation Essentials
This framework does not mean that effective programs should not include other components. Rather, these three elements make up the most bare-bones version that works.
In brief, here is how we define the the “ABCs”:
- Asset: A grant or investment given to the participant that is large enough to establish a sustainable, lasting livelihood.
This is now most often delivered as a labeled lump sum cash payment, but was historically a physical asset (a cow, some goats, a sewing machine, or start-up capital for a corner store, for example). Researchers we spoke with emphasized that the important thing is that the asset transfer be big enough to be able to generate income – a good rule of thumb is the local value of two goats, but there is no magic size. The investment is also typically accompanied by enterprise development and money management skills provided by a coach to increase the likelihood of livelihood success (more below). - Basic needs: Support to stabilize participating households.
This support allows participants to fully participate in building their new livelihood so they don’t have to sell their asset to meet urgent needs. This typically comes in the form of cash or food transfers to meet consumption needs in the short run while the asset becomes productive. In some programs, the lump sum cash transfer primarily designated for the asset has come often enough to cover such needs, but for most government programs, this means ensuring participants are linked to any existing social assistance programmes. - Coaching: Intensive support to build agency, know-how, and hope.
Coaching sessions support participants to think differently about what’s possible, build their confidence, dream up new goals and pursue them, and navigate and respond to changing circumstances and challenges. This is accompanied by technical know-how to develop their asset into a productive livelihood and group-based peer support. In most cases, this also includes some connection with the wider community to reduce barriers and lower social exclusion.
Are we 100% certain of this? No. Despite the amount of evidence on the approach, little evidence exists on each question and on the effectiveness of the approach for different vulnerable groups within the extreme poor population. But we already know a lot, and the evidence we do have suggests that the ABCs are the foundation to the approach. To our knowledge, the approach doesn’t deliver the proven, clear, and lasting impact across contexts for people living in extreme poverty without them. But of course, we will continue to adapt as the evidence changes.
Do we have to use the framing of the ABCs? No. Use what works for your audience! However, given the ample evidence available, we argue that we need to clarify what is technically correct in this approach in order to achieve our scale goals. And the more we do this from the same “song sheet,” the easier it will be to ensure that various partners understand that we’re all talking about the same evidence-informed thing.
What’s next? In a world where aid budgets are being slashed, it is imperative to scale the proven Graduation approach to enable 700 million people to take steps along a pathway out of extreme poverty. The Graduation community is already well placed and doing development differently, but as we move into a new phase of global development, we will need to be even clearer about what works and how to scale together. As one voice we can point to a simplified program that has transformational impact in just two years (or less) that can build on and leverage many ongoing at scale programs and existing budgets. It’s too costly to not invest in this proven impact. We invite you to join us in that chorus.
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