From Bangladesh to Afghanistan: BRAC shares its lessons in helping the poorest

In 2002, a Bangladesh NGO that helped rebuild its country after the devastating 1971 liberation war brought its skills to war-damaged Afghanistan. Based on three decades of poverty alleviation in Bangladesh, BRAC believed it could help the Afghan people rebuild their devastated economic and social infrastructure and improve their economic condition and quality of life after two decades of war.

BRAC began as a small-scale relief and rehabilitation project, almost entirely donor funded. Today, it is an independent, virtually self-financed, sustainable human development organization that is the largest in the world. BRAC employs 97,192 people and provides and protects livelihoods of around 100 million people in all 64 districts of Bangladesh. BRAC’s approach blends poverty alleviation and empowerment of the poor, using a holistic approach that sees poverty as being multidimensional.

With programs in Education, Health, Micro finance, Enterprise Development, Capacity Development, and the National Solidarity Program, BRAC Afghanistan operates in 94 districts in half of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, supported by OXFAM America, Hong Kong, SIDA, NOVIB, World Bank, UNICEF, WFP, USAID, DFID and BRAC.

The education program focuses on increasing girls’ enrolment in school and retention of female teachers. Recognizing that many children live far from formal schools and parents fear sending send girls aged 11-15 long distances to school, BRAC Afghanistan operates three types of community-based ‘one-teacher, one-room’ schools that allow children and young adults to complete their basic education through equivalency or transitional programs. All use the Afghan national school curriculum.

• Non-Formal Primary Education schools offer a three-year course to children 10-14 years old who have never attended school or who have dropped out.

• Feeder Schools prepare young children aged between five and six for entrance into the formal school system following completion of their BRAC course.

• Basic Education for Older Children schools serve young adults aged 11-16 years, who complete three years of primary curriculum in two years and then are expected to enroll in grade IV of formal school.

Community-based health care services are brought to people's doorsteps by health volunteers, supported and supervised by Community Health Workers. Static/mobile clinics provide facility based care for patients referred by volunteers, local field workers, and other agencies. Information, education and communication activities increase community awareness and foster support from locally available health services. Separate male and female discussion forums are held.

The micro-finance program offers small loans and a saving facility for Afghan women who want to start their own income- generating activities and thus create a better future, especially for the many families now headed by war widows. Village organizations, associations of poor and disadvantaged women who join together to achieve economic sustainability, support collective action and empowerment. BRAC also has created three Women’s Training and Production Centres in Kabul City.

The Small Enterprise Program assists those who aren’t eligible for micro-finance but can’t get support from formal financial institutions. SEP loans support small businesses like bakeries, grocery stores, weaving businesses, stationary stores, cloth/clothing businesses, pharmacies, home appliance delivery stores and shoemaking factories.

Since August 2003, BRAC has been working with the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development as a facilitating partner in the National Solidarity Program. BRAC facilitates community empowerment and rural reconstruction through the formation of local administrative bodies and, through the NSP framework, has implemented projects in reconstruction, rehabilitation and development intervention. BRAC also provides vocational and technical training aimed at reintegrating child soldiers and war-affected youth into the community, both socially and economically.

In October 2003, BRAC began an agricultural program focused on economically-viable agricultural activities and sustainable use of natural resources. This program has taught skills, established livestock clinics, and trained many para-veterinarians.

Capacity building training for development professionals in BRAC and other agencies is provided through training centres in Kabul, established June 2003, and Mazar-E-Shariff, May 2004.

BRAC also is working in tsunami-damaged Sri Lanka, inspired significantly by BRAC Afghanistan’s success. BRAC Sri Lanka was registered as an NGO in May 2005, to expedite its development programs in education, health, social development and economic development.

This summary is adapted from the BRAC site. BRAC Afghanistan has its own website. 

BRAC Afghanistan

House 45, Lane 04

Butcher Street, Baharistan

Kabul, Afghanistan

Also see Rebuilding Afghanistan from Within, by Sonya M. Sultan, June 2003.

 

UPDATE: National Solidarity Program has empowered local people but risks underfunding, says minister

In an article entitled Afghan aid that works: the National Solidarity Program empowers local people but risks underfunding, published in the Christian Science Monitor May 16, 2008, Mohammad Ehsan Zia, minister of rural rehabilitation and development for the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, talks about the achievements of the National Solidarity Program but says it is facing a serious funding shortfall.

 

BRAC expands into Africa, United States and United Kingdom in 2006

In 2006, BRAC expanded its operations to Uganda and Tanzania, and affiliated organizations were established in the United Kingdom and the United States. In June 2006, BRAC began operating its Microfinance Programme in two districts in Uganda - Kampala and Iganga, opening 10 offices with 58 staff. To date, over 460 Village Organisations have been formed in Uganda with over 11,000 members and more than US $560,000 has been disbursed with a loan realisation rate of 100%. BRAC also plans to open 550 education centres with a target of nearly 20,000 learners to be enrolled in the Kitgum and Pader districts of the country.

In June 2006, BRAC began operating its Microfinance Programme in three regions in Tanzania - Dar-es-salam, Arusha and Coast, opening 10 offices with a total staff of 57. To date, over 307 Village Organisations have been formed with over 8,300 members and more than US $ 570,000 has been disbursed with a loan realisation rate of 100%.

BRAC UK was founded and registered as a charity in London in 2006, and belongs to the expanding BRAC federation. Its mission is the alleviation of poverty and empowerment of the poor in the UK, Africa, Asia and Latin America. BRAC UK’s main areas of focus are :program implementation among diaspora communities in the UK adapting the BRAC successful approaches, advocacy for successful development led by the south and fund raising for BRAC programmes, primarily in Africa and Asia. In the UK, plans are underway to implement a women health volunteers initiative with diaspora communities in East London as well as financial education for women and young people. Investigation is underway to determine the needs of Somali youth in Northwest London and how this can be linked with BRAC UK’s efforts with communities in Tower Hamlets.

BRAC USA’s mission is to raise awareness of BRAC’s successful community development model, mobilize resources and cultivate business partnerships to support BRAC’s global expansion.

 

UPDATE: BRAC wins world's largest humanitarian prize

BRAC, the largest non-profit organization in the developing world, has been selected to receive the world’s largest humanitarian prize, the 2008 Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize of $1.5 million, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation announced in Los Angeles on August 27, 2008. The prize will be presented on October 20 in Geneva, Switzerland. “BRAC’s approach to creating self-sufficient and sustainable programs on a massive scale has blazed a trail for development organizations around the world,” said Steven M. Hilton, President and CEO of the Hilton Foundation. “Where most NGOs might tackle one dimension of poverty, BRAC delivers multi-faceted solutions to attack all aspects simultaneously,” he added.

Launched in Bangladesh in 1972, BRAC reaches more than 110 million people with its holistic approach to addressing poverty by providing micro-loans, education, health services, job creation and human rights education.Now in its 37th year, BRAC has taken its model beyond Bangladesh into eight other Asian and African countries. It has issued $5 billion in micro-loans to nearly seven million borrowers; graduated 3.8 million students from its primary schools and 2.3 million from its pre-primary schools, with 1.5 million children currently enrolled in its 52,000 schools; provided basic health services to more than 90 million; created 8.5 million jobs; and employed 110,000 staff and teachers.

“To receive the Hilton Prize is a great honor and tremendous validation of our work,” says BRAC found and chairperson Fazle Hasan Abed. “Billions of people in the world today live in extreme poverty, and it is our goal to transition the poor from receiving aid to controlling their own destinies. The Hilton Prize will add to our momentum as we take on greater challenges to unleash the full potential of the poor, especially women, and realize justice and their full human rights.”

BRAC plans to use the $1.5 million prize winnings as a challenge grant to generate $3 million, through its US affiliate BRAC USA, to accelerate its recently established programs in southern Sudan, says Abed. BRAC is one of the first NGOs to move into southern Sudan and in less than a year, has 6,000 enrolled in its micro-finance program, 20 acres under cultivation, 100 trained community health workers, and 50 schools in progress to provide the poorest children with an accelerated quality primary education.

BRAC was one of more than 225 nominees for the 2008 prize. Judy Miller, Vice President of the Hilton Foundation, said the prize’s international jurors were impressed by BRAC’s innovation and its program diversity, along with its ability to dramatically scale up its work and to expand beyond Bangladesh into other developing countries, accomplished with nearly 80% of its $485 million budget funded through its own enterprises and loan charges.“BRAC began by targeting poor rural women and recently announced a major initiative to educate girls in Africa and Asia,” Miller said. “This is the third year in a row that our Hilton Prize recipient is an NGO that recognizes women as the critical agents of change to lift their families and communities from poverty.” 

Formerly known as the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, BRAC was founded in 1972 by former Shell Oil executive Fazle Hasan Abed, with proceeds from the sale of his London apartment, to help Bangladesh overcome the devastation and trauma of the liberation war that secured its independence from Pakistan. Using micro-finance as its core component, BRAC sets up small village organizations run by 30 to 40 women that provide their communities access to credit for economic development and also deliver health services, education, social awareness of legal and human rights and business management and skills training.

Today, BRAC’s programs reach three quarters of Bangladesh’s population through the efforts of more than 110,000 micro-finance officers, teachers, health staff and enterprise managers. BRAC has helped bring Bangladesh’s immunization rate from 2% to 83% and reached 86 million people with its tuberculosis control program. The organization has been instrumental in lowering Bangladesh’s maternal and infant mortality rates.At a time when half of children’s deaths were caused by diarrhea, BRAC sent women into the countryside to teach 13 million mothers how to prepare an oral rehydration solution.

In recent years, BRAC has expanded its programs globally. In 2002, the organization moved into post-Taliban Afghanistan after seeing the haunting images of three million refugees returning to the war-torn country. Starting out with $250,000 of its own funding, BRAC is now the country’s largest micro-finance, health and education provider, operating in 25 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces and disbursing over $96 million in small loans. BRAC began working in Sri Lanka in 2004 after the devastating tsunami and has set up 40 offices throughout Pakistan. Over the last two years, BRAC launched programs in Tanzania, Uganda, Liberia and Southern Sudan, and plans to operate in 10 African countries by 2010.

This story was adapted from the Hilton Foundation's press release. The Hilton Foundation was created in 1944 by hotel entrepreneur Conrad N. Hilton, who left his fortune to the foundation when he died in 1979 with instructions to help the most disadvantaged and vulnerable throughout the world without regard to religion, ethnicity or geography. Since its inception, the foundation has committed more than $780 million for charitable projects throughout the world.

 

 

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