Bangladesh was the original development “basket case,” the demeaning term used for countries that would always depend on aid. The country faced famines, floods, and military coups. When it split from Pakistan in 1971, many observers doubted that it could survive as an independent state. Yet over the past 20 years, Bangladesh has made big developmental gains, particularly in the areas of health, life expectancy, and education much of which is credited to BRAC.
When assessing pilots, people often talk about a program or organization’s potential to scale. Certainly there are factors that make some models easier to scale than others. At BRAC, the world’s largest nonprofit organization, there is a relentless focus on making models that are not only effective, but also efficient and scalable. But our current research initiative, called the Doing While Learning: Collaborative Models for Scaling Innovation project, is revealing the importance of factors beyond the model, such as organizational capabilities and social capital in the pilot’s environment.
BRAC founder and chairperson Sir Fazle Hasan Abed spoke as part of a panel discussion on labor and global supply chains, held at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City last week. Here’s the full description from the Initiative website:
We live in an innovation obsessed world. Organisations across sectors have made innovating an explicit priority. Many are devising deliberate strategies to foster innovation. In 2012, BRAC, the world’s largest NGO, developed the Social Innovation Lab for this purpose. We step out from the researcher’s cubicle and explore innovations happening on the frontlines.
Youth representatives from BRAC USA attended Malala Day at the UN Headquarters on Friday, June 12th, celebrating Malala Yousafzai’s 16th birthday and raising awareness for the need to integrate youth leadership for education equality.
Whenever we think about health services, the things that typically come to mind are doctors, paramedics, nurses or even hospitals. In Bangladesh, for decades women have been creating a new norm for how primary health care can look by delivering health care services using a door-to-door approach without the typical doctor, paramedic or even nurse. Besides providing basic health care services, these women are expanding their communities’ perceptions of women’s potential and importance in society.
My former roommate, Nina, was a Teach for America fellow in the South Side of Chicago. Dropouts, teenage pregnancies, drugs, violence–she had plenty of stories about her students along these lines. But she had another one that was tragic in another way that stays in my mind: one of her students had been incredible bright, resourceful, committed.
reflects that its development was far more consistent compared to the development of neighbouring countries like Pakistan and Nepal. Although Bangladesh has progressed significantly in adverting maternal and neonatal deaths, reducing transmission of communicable diseases, ensuring food security for all, but poverty still remains as a frontline concern for the country.
100,000 in 1990 to just 194 in 2010, while other indicators like neonatal and under-five mortality have also fallen.
While those numbers are still too high (in many developed countries, the rates for all are in single digits), the change is still staggering. Bangladesh is close to reaching the fourth and fifth of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals regarding child and maternal mortality.
Everyone, from Save the Children, Plan International, and UNICEF, to BRAC, agrees that the early years are critical to a child’s overall development. How best to invest in those early years is a fertile topic for exploration and debate among academics, scientists, and policymakers. What if early childhood and adolescent development was also seen as a potential career path for women?
Day 1 of our Frugal Innovation Forum sought out best practices from diverse organizations—from Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan to Myanmar and Sri Lanka—grounded in developing human capital, organizing communities, and engaging civic action. While common rhetoric around innovation tends to stress technology advances, Asif Saleh, BRAC’s Senior Director, Strategy, Communications, and Capacity, stressed that “this innovation is not about products, but is a constant process in the organization focused on impact.”
In session at a BRAC Primary School in the Korail slum of Dhaka, Bangladesh. (Photo: Oscar Abello/BRAC)
The conditions into which a child is born affects not only her future opportunity, but also her position in society.
Poverty itself can limit society’s expectations of the child’s ability to perform well in school, constantly reminding her of the miniscule chance she has to overcome adversity and poverty.