Tweetchat: Ending extreme poverty through graduation programs

October 15, 2013

Reading Time: 2 minutes

On October 20, from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. GMT, Rabeya Yasmin, the director of BRAC’s graduation program targeting the ultra-poor will take and answer questions via Twitter. We invite you to participate and submit questions ahead of time using the hashtag #BRACultrapoor.

The ultra-poor are global development’s last mile – the last remaining households that have yet to reap any benefits from widespread economic growth, or from existing development interventions like microfinance, community health workers, or community-based schools. Exactly who and where these households are, as well as whether and how to engage with them to improve their circumstances, are frontiers of impressive progress according to some experts but merely expensive distractions according to others. Over the course of several recent weeks, the Development Pathways blog served as a battlefield for this ongoing debate.

On October 20, from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. GMT, via Twitter, Rabeya Yasmin, the director of BRAC’s graduation program targeting the ultra-poor will take and answer questions about ending extreme poverty and BRAC’s graduation programs targeting the ultra-poor. We invite you to participate and submit questions ahead of time through Twitter, using the hashtag #BRACultrapoor. If you do not wish to Tweet, please leave your questions below in the comments section for this post.

Rabeya joined BRAC in 1995, right as BRAC was beginning to contemplate how to reach those that its already massive microfinance, health, and education programs couldn’t reach. She obtained her master’s degree in political science from the University of Dhaka, and in poverty and development from IDS, Sussex University. Here’s an excerpt from her article this past summer in the Journal of Social Business:

Good targeting is one of the biggest challenges in making any intervention for the poorest of the poor successful. A programme may have the finest product design, however because of deficiency in target group definition or targeting faults it may end up producing insignificant result. [sic]

Check out the video above for an overview of how BRAC’s ultra-poor program works, including the targeting aspect, submit your questions via Twitter, and we hope you’ll join us on October 20.

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