Cyclone Aila: BRAC Continues its Relief Efforts in Bangladesh

Over 10,800 people found refuge in BRAC cyclone shelters as the Cyclone Aila hit the coasts of Bangladesh, taking the lives of over 150 people and devastating the homes and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands.

Since water has inundated people’s homes and land and caused a loss of their household assets and livestock, the families cannot resume any activities now to earn money and are in desperate need for food. Drinking water is also scarce as the saline sea water has contaminated most of the water sources.

At present, BRAC staff are providing dry food rations, consisting of chira (dried and flattened rice), molasses, bottled water and oral rehydration solution packets (for diarrhea) to the most distressed.

However, we need your help to reach 40,000 vulnerable families who will desperately need food aid over the coming weeks. $15 can provide a week of food-aid for a cyclone-affected family. Please consider making a donation of $15 or more to help BRAC feed 40,000 who have lost their homes or livelihoods to the cyclone.

A typical food aid package will consist of enough rice, lentils, cooking oil, potatoes and salt for a cyclone-affected family to eat for a week. The food aid will be disbursed in installments throughout the week so that families won't have to worry about storage and food going bad.

You can donate online, or send a check to BRAC USA, 11 East 44th St., Suite 1600, New York, NY 10017, ph: 212 808 5615.



You can also help by publicizing this post in your own blog/social media and by emailing this link to your friends and network. Your support will go a long way to reducing suffering and allow people to get back on their feet.

BRAC Launches Pre-Primary School Pilot in Pakistan

Like many developing countries, Pakistan has made significant progress towards increasing enrollment in primary education; however, studies show that basic problems such as low retention rates for both girls and boys in primary schools persist and stand in the way of achieving universal primary education. Recognizing this issue, BRAC USA has riased nearly $50,000 to implement a pilot pre-primary school education program in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan. Specifically, BRAC plans to open 20 pre-primary schools over the next year. Each school will have 30-33 children 5 to 6 years of age and will maintain a girl to boy ratio of 70:30. The goals of the program include:

• Using pre-primary schools as a means to smooth the transition for children into a formal classroom setting, enhancing skill development and reducing primary school drop-out rates


• Using pre-schools to reach poor and often excluded children, as well as to promote greater gender equality in education


• Developing an institutional structure with skilled administrators, trained teachers and educational materials that will deliver cost-effective and replicable pre-school education and programs


• Supporting the government in its effort to achieve universal primary education

The pilot program is designed to replicate BRAC’s extensive experience in Bangladesh. BRAC first launched its pre-school intervention in Bangladesh in 1997 with 40 one-room pilot schools established to provide preparatory educational opportunities to underprivileged children between 5 and 6 years of age. BRAC has since expanded this program nationally, to include more than 26,000 pre-schools where over 700,000 children are currently enrolled. To date, approximately 2.3 million children (60%+ girls) have graduated from BRAC’s pre-primary system, almost all of which were subsequently admitted into primary schools in the formal education system.

BRAC’s experience in Bangladesh has illustrated that children completing pre-school education perform better in primary school not only in academics but in a number of other important areas: They have better school attendance records, are more proactive in classroom work including co-curricular activities and demonstrate better standards of hygiene. Furthermore, the primary education completion rate is higher for students who participated in BRAC’s pre-primary schools, with 81% of BRAC pre-primary students who entered into formal primary schools in 2003 completing their primary education in 2008. It is these impressive results that BRAC hopes to replicate in Pakistan.

Cyclone Aila Strikes Bangladesh - BRAC Launches Relief Efforts

Cyclone Aila tore into the southwestern coast of Bangladesh on Monday, wreaking havoc in ten coastal districts and killing more than 150 people. BRAC staff have been working around the clock since before the cyclone hit to evacuate people and immediately launched relief efforts. The storm, with tidal waves caused by winds of up to 100 kilometers per hour (Reuters), has rendered hundreds of thousands marooned homeless, and many are still missing.



As many of the cyclone-hit areas were also affected by Cyclone Sidr, BRAC was already involved in the region with Sidr rehabilitation work, and has quickly shifted into disaster relief mode. Today, Dr. Babar Kabir, Director of BRAC's Disaster, Environment and Climate Change Program (DECC) traveled to the districts of Bagerhat, Khulna and Satkhira to assess damage and relief needs as well to provide support to the local BRAC staff who bore the brunt of the storm, and since then have been working overtime on relief efforts.

Dr. Kabir has reported to us that water scarcity will become a public health concern as the local ponds (which are the only source of drinking water) have become inundated with saline water. His prognosis is grim, explaining that while the pond sand filters we had installed after Cyclone Sidr will remove microbial contamination, the water will remain saline. However, he also reports that BRAC staff worked around the clock to evacuate people, and are now providing dry food to those who have sought shelter in our offices and cyclone shelters.

No stranger to disasters, BRAC has provided emergency aid and rehabilitation since its inception as a relief organization in the aftermath of the catastrophic 1970 Bhola cyclone, the deadliest tropical cyclone ever recorded with estimated casualties of 300,000 to 500,000 lives.

With the generous help of our supporters, BRAC USA was able to raise nearly $6 million for relief efforts following Cyclone Sidr in November 2007. Please click here to donate to support BRAC's relief program in response to Cyclone Aila.

With the death toll likely to rise, Aila is the worst cyclone to hit Bangladesh since the 2007 storm, Sidr, which killed an estimate of more than 5,000 people. As some districts are still recovering from Sidr, Aila’s damage to village infrastructure—livelihoods, agriculture crop production, housing—is devastating. The Daily Star reports that the economic loss in the affected districts of southern Bangladesh is massive. The humanitarian impact is also potentially terrible, with the Daily Star reporting acute shortage of drinking water and 90% of thatched huts and mud houses demolished by the cyclone.


Please support our Cyclone Aila relief efforts. You can donate online, or send a check to BRAC USA, 11 East 44th St., Suite 1600, New York, NY 10017, ph: 212 808 5615. You can also help by publicizing this post in your own blog/social media and by emailing this link to your friends and network. Your support will go a long way to reducing suffering and allow people to get back on their feet.

Click here to read the full press release.

Preventing Swine Flu Outbreak and Community Based Health Prevention

BRAC University and the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B) co-sponsored a seminar on the H1N1 virus (popularly known as the swine flu) this Thursday. Scholars and health professionals gathered at Swine Flu: Global and Local Perspective to emphasize the importance of preventative measures and education to curb the potential for H1N1 outbreaks. The participants agreed that preventative hygienic actions are crucial, particularly in the developing world.

More than 10,000 cases of swine flu have officially been reported to the WHO in 41 countries as of Wednesday.

Dr. Stephen P Luby, head of Program for Infectious Disease and Vaccine Sciences Division (PIDVS), ICDDR,B, underscored the need for individuals be mindful of simple hygienic practices. "In order to prevent any potential outbreak in Bangladesh, people must improve their respiratory hygiene – by sneezing into their elbows instead of into their hands or into the air, practice social distancing, wash hands often throughout the day with soap and water, and refrain from smoking as it impairs respiratory systems."

If the suggestions sound like the most basic hygienic advice, it is because they are. The unfortunate situation in most developing countries is that these practices are still not widespread, and because of poor infrastructure it is difficult to communicate such important messages to a large audience. And while the swine flu is the latest health concern to grip global attention, developing countries have long had to deal with outbreaks or over-prevalence of diseases that can be easily contained or treated.

In Bangladesh, BRAC has had tremendous success in putting forth a model to deal with the problems of poor communication, infrastructure, and medical resources. Our community health volunteers have been encouraging and teaching healthy practices in rural villages of Bangladesh since 1977; most of the women are residents of the villages themselves, and are easily able to relay information from BRAC’s central health offices to their neighbors. Today, over 70,000 all-female community health volunteers—Shasthya Shebikas, or Shebikas—reach more than 92 million people in all 64 districts of Bangladesh. Shebikas make up one of the largest national-scale community health volunteer programs in the world.

And one of BRAC’s health programs is the Water, Sanitation, and Health program (WASH), which was started in 2006 with the aim of providing hygiene education for 37.5 million people. Promoting the same practices that prevent the spread of swine flu, WASH uses the Shebikas to reach community people, and BRAC concurrently works to improve water supplies and sanitation services in their homes and their schools.

The direct-contact spread of the virus accentuates the collective responsibility of individuals to maintain basic hygiene. With the Shebika model successfully replicated in Afghanistan and Uganda, we are hopeful that our community-driven, continuous educational programming will prevent situations such as the swine flu outbreak from getting out of control in the places we work.

Executive Director of BRAC International Visits BRAC USA

Mr. Aminul Alam, Executive Director of BRAC International, stopped by the office on Thursday to meet the BRAC USA staff. With nearly 35 years of experience with the organization, Mr. Alam had many stories to share spanning his time working in the field as a program organizer up through his most recent endeavor, managing and expanding BRAC's international programs in Asia and Africa.

One of our staff’s favorite stories was Mr. Alam’s description of some of the innovative methods that BRAC has used to build its program’s in Afghanistan. BRAC launched its microfinance program in 2002 and is now the largest microfinance provider in Afghanistan, disbursing over $100 million in small loans to date. Given the unique political, social and economic challenges in the region, growing the program while upholding the central tenets of the BRAC mission, has presented unique challenges.

Aminul Alam, Executive Director of BRAC International, seen here speaking to BRAC USA President Susan Davis

Thus, BRAC has used a variety of techniques to grow the program. For example, when entering a new community BRAC staff might start by simply supplying drinking water to the village. This approach gives the staff the opportunity to form a trusting relationship with the village leaders and also provides an opportunity to explain BRAC’s mission to the community. Next, BRAC staff might supply the village with sewing machines. BRAC has found that sewing machines are often in high demand and providing them in a centralized location gives the BRAC staff a chance to meet with the women, who are potential borrowers and program staff. As BRAC’s relationship with the village strengthens, so does the recruitment of women, the retention rate and the effectiveness of the overall program.

BRAC's experience shows that the key to engaging local communities is to build trust rather than to expect people to eagerly embrace the services we are providing. Working with women, a core component of BRAC's activities, required the Afghani people to allow us to bend customs that were centuries old, and for our international staff, led by Mr. Alam, to demonstrate the level of innovative thinking that has become the hallmark of BRAC. It is a credit to both groups that a flexible, working solution was found.

Click here to learn more about BRAC's work in Afghanistan and around the world.

"The System of BRAC is a Complete One for Development"

So says Professor Gilbert Bukenya, the Vice President of Uganda. As we blogged last week, His Excellency Vice President Bukenya was visiting Bangladesh to witness first-hand the work of BRAC in its country of origin. According to BDNews24's article reporting a news conference at the BRAC Centre Inn in Dhaka, Professor Bukenya said he was 'highly impressed by BRAC's initiatives to mobilise local people to borrow money to establish enterprises', and also praised BRAC's health programs for their impact on the rural poor. The latter is something we are especially proud of, since aside from being a politician Professor Bukenya is a Doctor of Medicine and also possesses a Doctorate of Philosophy in Public Health.

His Excellency Professor Bukenya (left) seen speaking to the press with BRAC Chairperson Dr. Fazle Abed. Photo by BDNews24

The news conference wrapped up the Vice President's six-day trip to the capital of Bangladesh. He noted that there were many similarities between Uganda and Bangladesh, such as the mindset of the people and the high prevalence of poverty (In Uganda, 32% of the population live on less than $1 a day; in Bangladesh the figure is 36%).

Despite that rather sobering statistic, Professor Bukenya came armed with possible solutions for the future, suggesting the need to improve the meager $1 million trade volume between the two countries. He felt that the textile and food processing industries were two areas where there are enormous potential benefits that could be reaped.

Developing countries such as Bangladesh are often at a disadvantage while trading with their more affluent counterparts due to protectionist policies that are still implemented by rich countries. Professor Bukenya pointed out the problem - 'Bangladeshi textile's major destination is the US where you have to face issues like quotas and tariffs' - and raised an alternative - 'in Uganda we have no such conditions'.

This proposal is a further step forward in the recent surge of South-South collaboration, one of the brighter lights in the embattled field of international development. Click here and here to read about BRAC's own successes in the fields of textile and food processing in Bangladesh.

Click here to read the BDNews24 article.

BRAC: Bangladesh's Audacity of Hope

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.

Peter and Jennifer Buffett talk about BRAC and the Girl Effect to the LA Times Magazine

BRAC Advisory Council members Peter and Jennifer Buffett, will be featured in the upcoming issue of the L.A. Times Magazine.

Peter and Jennifer discuss the foundation they run, the NoVo Foundation, and it's work promoting the empowerment of adolescent girls through BRAC. Peter's visit to BRAC's programs in Bangladesh inspired him to compose the "Set Us Free" and create the following video:



The article will be coming out in the May 17th issue of LA et cetera, the Los Angeles Times Magazine. Click here to visit the website.

BRAC Recognized for its Work with Victims of Acid Throwing

BRAC was recently recognized at the International Conference of Acid Survivors for it's work with victims of acid throwing in Bangladesh. Victims of acid attacks are generally women, and they suffer severe burns and life-long pain and disfigurement.

BRAC takes a holistic approach in helping victims of acid attacks, providing them access to medical and psychological treatment as well as access to legal services for them to bring the assailants to justice.

The Daily Star tells the story of one of the victims who attended the conference:

Peyara Begum's son's teacher attacked her with acid after she refused to return 'the love' he so undeservedly tried to bestow on her.

Her face was burnt as was major portion of her body, and her entire face had to be reconstructed.

To pay for this treatment Peyara had to sell all her properties. And yet, today she stands tall and proud and tells her extraordinary story, of how she recovered and continues to live a normal life with dignity and honour, with the help of her supportive and loving husband.

Peyara works at a life insurance company now and earns enough to maintain the expenses of both of her sons' education.

Click here to read the full article.

Uganda Vice President Visits BRAC in Bangladesh

Professor Gilbert Bukenya, His Excellency the Vice President of Uganda, landed in Dhaka on Thursday. The primary purpose of his trip was to visit BRAC's programs in Bangladesh, and to explore the possibilities of mutually beneficial South-South collaboration that would help Uganda achieve their Millennium Development Goals and "Prosperity for All".

A development organization operating with unprecedented scale and reach in Bangladesh, BRAC began working in Uganda only in 2006 and has swiftly become one of the largest microfinance operators in the country. As of March 2009, BRAC Uganda provided $26.3 million in microcredit loans and employs a staff of 1390 people (95% of whom are Ugandan) in its microfinance, education, health, and agricultural development programs. Consequently BRAC has a triple impact in Uganda, stimulating the local economy through microloans, employment for the local community and the economic benefits that are a product of its social services.

Vice President Bukenya is currently visiting BRAC's programs just outside Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital. During his trips he has been guided by Mr. Aminul Alam, the Executive Director of BRAC's Overseas Programmes. He also met with Bangladesh's President Zillur Rahman, who urged cooperation between the two countries to foster bilateral trade and investment. In the meeting, Mr. Bukenya praised the role that BRAC and other Bangladeshis have played in alleviating poverty in Uganda.

Providing Insurance to Those that Need it Most

Author Ryan Hogarth recently produced a series of case studies on Health Microinsurance (HMI) schemes in Bangladesh. The second installment documented BRAC's efforts to increase access to its health centers in Bangaldesh through the Micro Health Insurance for Poor Rural Women in Bangladesh (MHIB) initiative.

The article is accessible at:

http://www.microcapital.org/microcapital-story-brac-provides-micro-health-insurance-in-bangladesh-lessons-in-financial-viability/

It describes how in 1995, BRAC began establishing health centers, or Shushasthya, around Bangladesh. By 2007 there were 30 BRAC centers around the country. The user fees necessary to make the centers financially viable priced out many in the poorer segments of the population. BRAC launched its MHIB insurance scheme in 2001 to bridge this gap.

The article describes in some details the for four types of health insurance packages offerered under the program: General Package, Equity Package, a Pre-paid Pregnancy Related Care Package, a School Health Package.

How Effective are BRAC's Health Programs?

Implementing programs is only the first step to addressing the health concerns of the poor; BRAC also does regular research to measure the effectiveness of its programs and track the impact on the local community. We thought we'd share some of the finding culled from research on BRAC's health programs in Bangladesh.

The information below draws from studies and surveys done by or in collaboration with BRAC's Research and Evaluation Division on family planning; maternal, neonatal, and child health; Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) and HIV/AIDS awareness.

A Health Promoter makes a household visit. 80,000 health promoters provide services to over 32 million households in Bangladesh.

Family Planning

• In 2004 a study showed that 57% of poor BRAC members used family planning, compared to 49.6% of poor non-members and 51.3% of non-poor non-members.
• A 2006 survey showed that 68% of women in Bangladesh used contraception of any kind, with the highest rates among BRAC's village organization (VO) members at 76%.
  

A monthly village health forum. Topics range from family planning to immunization.

Aids Awareness

• In 1995 only 1.6% of a surveyed population of women knew using condoms prevented HIV/AIDS. In a follow up in 1999, that figure had improved to 31% for BRAC members, while for non-members awareness was at 20.3%.
  
• A 2005 survey showed that Commercial Sex Workers listed BRAC as their main source of information about HIV/AIDS (94%).

Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health

• In 2006, 84% of children had completed immunization of all doses. This figure was highest among BRAC VO members at 100%, and lowest in non-poor non-members at 69%.
• A 2002 survey showed that infant survival upto 60 months was at 94% for BRAC members, compared to 90% for poor non-members.

A Health worker conducts a prenatal household visit.

Water, Sanitation and Health (WASH)

• Between 1992 and 1999, use of safe water for cooking increased from 4.8% to 13.7% for BRAC households and 12.1% for non-BRAC households among the surveyed population.
• A nation-wide survey in 2006 showed BRAC was the leading source of information about sanitary latrines, reaching even more people than mass media. 79% of the Ultra poor and 76% of BRAC VO members cited BRAC as their primary source.

Working together in a BRAC sanitary napkin center.

It's clear that significant strides have been made, but it's equally clear that there's still a long way to go. The improvements in family planning, AIDS awareness, sanitation, and maternal and child care are certainly achievements to be proud of, but we cannot afford to rest on them. There is still much work to be done in improving these numbers as well as reaching out to those who still do not benefit from our services.

Click here to see more of the research donw by our Research and Evaluation Division.

- Maher Sattar

Training Young Girls Can Jump-Start an Economy

Women and girls have always been the focal point of BRAC's anti-poverty approach, as the organization not only recognizes their vulnerabilities but also their thirst and potential as agents of change. This viewpoint helped make BRAC a pioneer implementer of the "Girl Effect," a Nike and NoVo Foundation-led mission to create opportunities for girls and for the world.

As Alyson Warhurst described in a recent Business Week article entitled "Girl Effect Could Lift the Global Economy":

"There are 600 million adolescent girls in developing countries, but they are
largely invisible to the world at large. To ignore them is to miss the 'girl
effect,' which could be an unexpected answer to the global economic crisis."

The effect of providing these often overlooked girls with education, health care and an opportunity to raise their standard of living does not only effect the individual but can provide significant benefits to the society and economy. For example:

• When a girl in the developing world receives seven or more years of education, she marries four years later and has 2.2 fewer children

• Educated girls grow into educated women, who - research shows - have healthier babies and are more likely to educate their children

• When girls and women earn income, they reinvest 90% of it into their families, as compared to only 30 to 40% for a man

• An extra year of primary school boosts girls' future wages by 10 to 20%

• An extra year of secondary school boosts girls' future wages by 15 to 25%

As a group, girls still receive less than 1% of official development assistance, yet many development professionals agree that educating young women yields some of the highest returns of all development investments. To realize the potential impact of the "Girl Effect" throughout the world, additional support and attention is needed.Click here to learn more about the Girl Effect.

Click here to support BRAC's programs for girls in Tanzania and Bangladesh.

Health is Wealth - Susan Davis and Paul Farmer Interviewed by Heifer International

BRAC USA President Susan Davis and Paul Farmer, one of the founders of the widely acclaimed Partners In Health, were interviewed by Heifer International on the subject of healthcare for those living in dire poverty.

In the video, Susan asserts that "access to healthcare is the most critical component of improving people's well being." Dr. Farmer points out the impact intervention has on the lives of the poor, stating "public health, medicine ... agricultural initiatives and access to education, you just get those few interventions in place for people living in dire poverty, you add 20 years of life expectancy."

Paul Farmer and Partners In Health are widely acknowledged for their success in providing healthcare services for the poor in Latin America, Africa and Russia, while BRAC's healthcare programs today reach more than 92 million in Asia and Africa.

Click here to watch other videos produced by Heifer International on topics including education, fair markets and sustainable agriculture.

BRAC Poultry Becomes Key Supplier for KFC

In the spirit of Earth Day and in an effort to procure a maximum number of local ingredients to reduce carbon emission, BRAC Poultry has become the official chicken supplier to KFC restaurants in Bangladesh. KFC is the world's most popular chicken restaurant chain and has more than 11,000 restaurants in more than 80 countries, including 3 recently opened locations in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

BRAC's key supplier relationship represents a significant accomplishment for what started as a grassroots experiment in the 1970s to create income generating opportunities and improve the productivity of the poultry sector in Bangladesh. Today BRAC's poultry operations include poultry farms that produce high-yield variety day-old-chicks, commercial broiler farms that produce adult chickens, a broiler processing plant and even a poultry disease diagnostics laboratory.

Specifically, BRAC's broiler chicken processing plant, which was opened in 2004, can process approximately 5,000 birds per day and it is the only automated plant of its kind in Bangladesh. The plant purchases chickens from BRAC commercial broiler farms and a large number of independent farmers and sells the dressed meat to a variety of customers including large restaurants, hotels, supermarkets and even individual households. Given that the demand for poultry meat and eggs still exceeds the supply, BRAC's poultry operations remain an important means of supporting rural farmers while also driving sector growth by increasing the supply of high-yield variety chicks and processed broiler meat.

World Bank: Protecting Education Gains in Poor Countries During Crisis Will Require Global Partnership

The World Bank recently did a study on the role of publicly funded private schools in developing countries, including BRAC's non-formal primary and pre-primary education programs in Bangladesh. Here are a few of the findings:

* Publicly funded private schools are providing high-quality, low-cost education. In certain studies, the educational achievements of students in these schools have been higher than those of students in publicly-operated schools.

* Enrollments in private education institutions has grown enormously over the past 15 years. Between 1991 and 2004, enrollment in private primary schools grew by 58 percent, compared to only 10 percent in public primary schools. Globally, approximately 113 million students are currently enrolled in non-government schools, 51 million of which are studying at the secondary level.

* More than 90 education public-private partnership programs exist in 50 countries around the world. These programs serve both high- and low-income families OECD countries spend an average of 12 percent of their education budgets on privately managed education institutions.

* In Bangladesh, the Non-Formal Primary Education Program of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) reaches over 1 million poor children. Launched in 1985 with 22 one-room schools; by 2007 it was serving more than 1.5 million children in more than 20,000 preprimary and 32,000 primary schools. Together, these schools account for 11 percent of all primary school children in the country.

Click here to read the article.