On Friday, 8 November,at a public dialogue event hosted by the London School of Economics (LSE), new evidence was presented that the strategic partnership agreement – an agreement signed in June 2011 between BRAC, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAT) – has made a significant contribution to enable BRAC to deliver programmes effectively and is an innovation in donor collaboration with a southern NGO.
BRAC’s social enterprises have always been based on a drive to find alternate livelihoods for Bangladesh’s rural poor. None were started simply as business endeavours; instead, these unique enterprises have stakeholders. While every business has a purpose of maximising profit, BRAC’s purpose is poverty alleviation. These enterprises provide 72 per cent of the funds for BRAC’s own programmes, ensuring self-sustainability by reinvesting 50 per cent of their profits back into development interventions.
“When it would rain, we did not have a dry area to sleep… I used old and torn rags to cover my children.” The video speaks for itself. A self-told story about how Chobi Rani, with the assistance of BRAC, brought herself out of the harshest forms of poverty, to feed and send her children to school, live in a comfortable home and maintain successful enterprises in farming.
This article was originally posted on IRC WASH blog on 1 August 2014 by Cor Dietvorst and Vera van der Grift Dr. Mushtaque Chowdhury from BRAC on the Bangladesh public health miracle, aid or trade, arsenic, floating latrines and the post-2015 development agenda.
On 24 June, 2014, BRAC welcomed Joshua Goldstein from the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion, to Bangladesh. Josh, a key figure in the campaign for disability-inclusive development, is helping to galvanise a worldwide movement that takes financial inclusion that necessary step further- including persons with disabilities. Naturally – connecting with the world’s largest NGO seemed like a great place to start.
“I couldn’t help but teach – it was the only way I could manage time and space to get my own studies done,” says Habib with a wide grin. He was enjoying my reaction as upon hearing this, the biscuit I was having dropped from my hand. Habib is from the first batch of students to receive BRAC’s Medhabikash scholarship. He is now a lecturer at a private university in Dhaka, and he looks nothing like one.
Over the past 50 years, agricultural research has improved crop yields, particularly of staples like cereals and tubers. But this breeding has placed too little emphasis on nutrition, leaving the poorest, who often can only afford these staples, consuming too few essential nutrients like iron, zinc and vitamin A.
Amplifier Strategies and BRAC USA traveled to Bangladesh in March to meet with the BRAC International leadership team and discuss our ongoing partnership for Amplifier’s latest Collaborative Initiative. We built the Initiative as a special opportunity to engage family and individual philanthropists in a global partnership to end extreme poverty.
The woman was crying and saying something in an incomprehensible manner. I was sitting there, a couple of feet away, wondering what I had said wrong. The man sitting beside her didn’t react to her sudden burst of tears – she is his wife and he has gotten used to seeing her like this. My colleague Lusana and the BBC documentary producer Sarah both went quiet for a while.
BRAC wrapped up the second Frugal Innovation Forum amid much excitement about the possibility for new ideas and partnerships. Over 150 people representing 16 countries spent their weekend at BRAC’s scenic conference centre in Savar, learning from each other, sharing traffic jam-induced epiphanies, and bonding over tea, cricket and karaoke.
Over the past 40 years, BRAC has grown from a small relief organization into the world’s largest NGO. Yet despite this scale, BRAC is always looking for new ways to improve its programs for the 135 million people it serves around the world. One such way is to ensure that BRAC International’s country programs are filled with qualified and capable local individuals with first-hand knowledge of the community landscape and local culture.
In the village of Waterloo, two hours outside of central Freetown, Sierra Leone, I recently met with poultry rearers, participating in BRAC’s backyard poultry and kitchen garden project in partnership with the UK aid organization, DFID.