Saudi Aramco World, a bimonthly magazine whose goal is to broaden knowledge of the cultures, history and geography of the Arab and Muslim worlds and their connections with the West, published a feature on BRAC's work in their latest issue.
Below is an excerpt from the article:
During a little more than two weeks of visiting a wide range of projects, I witnessed firsthand how this mission gets in the blood, inspiring dignity and self-reliance in people who thought they had been forgotten—yet without making them dependent. “We can give the poor access to resources, like through microfinance,” notes Abed. “But they have to pay for it—either in labor or money. Ultimately, the poor have to change their own condition.”
Take Momena, a 60-year-old widow who, like many villagers, goes by only one name. Today she is a beneficiary of BRAC’s Ultra Poor Programme, founded in 2007. A year ago, she was a beggar, scraping by on less than 50 taka (85¢) a day in a rural settlement near Mymensingh, 150 kilometers (90 mi) north of the capital. Too poor to qualify for even the minimum microcredit loan of 4000 taka ($68), Momena received instead two cows, which sleep in part of her small hovel. Trained by BRAC instructors how to care for them, she now sells the milk from one and is fattening the other to sell for slaughter. With the proceeds, she plans to buy a small plot of land for rice cultivation and hire a laborer to help her farm it.
Perhaps the most successful aspect of BRAC’s approach to poverty alleviation is that projects are driven largely by economic incentives. Women take small loans to start grocery shops or garment-manufacturing, cattle-raising and other ventures that, with hard work, ultimately earn profits, enabling the women to take larger loans and expand their businesses. Health “volunteers” aren’t literally that: They earn money by fighting TB and malaria, and also by selling medicines at a small markup. The most radical aspect of BRAC, however, is what economists would call vertical integration: BRAC-run enterprises stretch from village fields to town markets and urban stores, plowing profits from dairy, poultry, silk, textile and handicraft productions, run by the poor, back into BRAC programs.
From individuals like Momena to entire communities, BRAC is remaking Bangladeshi society, encouraging low-income citizens to take part in—even to take charge of—political processes that have often left them out. For example, in a village courtyard near Mymensingh, it was heartening and somewhat astonishing to see some 200 farmers, laborers and housewives assemble beneath jackfruit trees and date palms for a bimonthly BRAC-sponsored polli shomaj (“rural society”) meeting, at which government officials spelled out details of school stipends, employment programs, wheat allotments and marriage laws.
“These community pressure groups ensure that the poor get the government money, resources and legal help they’re entitled to,” points out Zarina Nahar Kabir, director of BRAC’s social-development program. “We try to help people understand that democracy is something you have to practice to make a reality.”
The article also features the photography of students at Pathshala, the South Asian Institute of Photography.
Click here to see the photo gallery.
Click here to see the portrait gallery.
Click here to read the full article.
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