The following was originally posted on the CGAP Graduation blog by Janet Heisey, Director of the Asia Program at Trickle Up. The research paper “And Who Listens to the Poor? Shocks, Stresses and Safety Nets in India and Pakistan” by Karishma Huda, Sandeep Kaur and Nicolina Lamhauge, offers an interesting framework for qualitative evaluation of livelihood programs, such as those we implement at Trickle Up. It posed and answered some interesting questions: what keeps extremely poor people trapped in cycles of deprivation? Does the Graduation Program address these constraints? How can programs allocate resources to ensure that the maximum number of participants succeed?
This post, originally posted on the Jolkona website, is a reflection of Saman Nizami’s experiences and observations during her internship for BRAC’s “Targeting the Ultra-Poor” program in Bangladesh. This is the last in a series of posts from Saman Nizami about her experiences and observations while interning for BRAC’s “Targeting the Ultra-Poor” program in Bangladesh. You can read her previous posts in the series, A Tough Graduation, part I and part II.
This post, originally posted on the Jolkona website, is a reflection of Saman Nizami’s experiences and observations during her internship for BRAC’s “Targeting the Ultra-Poor” program in Bangladesh.
The following article was originally published by the Microfinance Investment Support Facility for Afghanistan (MISFA). Click here to read the original article. A joint study conducted by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and BRAC show that contrary to their fears about coming home, many Afghan returnees found a better life through microfinance.
So come celebrate BRAC’s 39 years of giving women the tools to be agents of change in their own lives and the lives of their families and communities.
As a communications consultant for VisionSpring, one of BRAC’s valued partners, I was amazed by the depth and scope of BRAC’s work in Bangladesh and globally. VisionSpring is a social enterprise dedicated to reducing poverty and generating opportunity in the developing world through the sale of affordable eyeglasses. Together, BRAC and VisionSpring have trained tens of thousands of entrepreneurs across Bangladesh to sell VisionSpring eyeglasses to those who need them to work, earn a living, and support their families.
Ulfat was just starting to feel the ground beneath her feet when, last July, life dealt Ulfat another hard blow. Born in the Nowshera district in the Kyber-Phaktunwa province, Ulfat was married off at 22, and divorced a year later because she did not produce a child within the first year of marriage. Upon her return to her father’s house, Ulfat was determined not to let her circumstances get the better off her. She started helping her father by taking care of the family buffalo and selling the milk. To generate some additional income, Ulfat also started a small tailoring business from home.
Even with the relatively quiet coverage by the international press on Pakistan flood rehabilitation, the fact still remains that this is still a time of tremendous need in Pakistan. 2,000 people have died from the floods, but in the flood-affected communities the death toll could rise if the related destabilizing threats are not tackled – water-borne diseases, food insecurity, destroyed economic opportunities that need to be restored, children who lost their schools, and homelessness at the onset of winter. In short, the UN Secretary General called this situation a “slow-moving titanic.”
Today at the United Nations Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Summit Special Event on the Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health, BRAC founder and chairperson Sir Fazle Hasan Abed pledged to mobilize $700 million over the next five years to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals of reducing child and maternal mortality and saving the lives of millions of the worlds most vulnerable in Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Southern Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Haiti.
The BRAC Health Program in Pakistan is still very new – the program in the Northwest Frontier Province began last winter, and it already covers about 3,000 households under the management of 20 female Community Health Volunteers, 4 Health Workers, and one Regional Health Coordinator. This is the second health program to be launched by BRAC in Pakistan, (the first being in Punjab in the fall of 2009).
Having recently returned from Afghanistan, I was encouraged to read a front-page article in last Sunday’s New York Times about Greg Mortenson being the “Unlikely Tutor Giving [US] Military Afghan Advice.”We hope that this is the beginning of more press coverage over the work being done by Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in Afghanistan.BRAC is one such organization, and we have been working in Afghanistan since 2002. Many Afghan refugees began returning to their war-torn country that year. To BRAC’s founders, such post-conflict humanitarian crisis was similar to what they lived through in Bangladesh after the Bangladesh War. It was in such post-war environment that BRAC was first founded in 1972, not unlike how BRAC Afghanistan was started thirty years later.
For those who are too poor even to benefit from microfinance loans, BRAC has a special program providing the ultra poor with a pathway out of poverty. Instead of giving these women loans, BRAC gives them assets: a cow, chickens, seeds, fabric for sewing, etc. depending on the livelihood they want to pursue. We provide them with training and extra support, like feed and vaccinations, and visit them every week to check on the progress of their new business and make sure they’re able to meet their basic needs.