BRAC participates in World Bank's Adolescent Girls Initiative Workshop

The World Bank launched the Adolescent Girl's Initiative (AGI) in October 2008 to promote the transition of adolescent girls into productive employment. The initiative is currently being implemented in Afghanistan, Liberia, Nepal, Rwanda and South Sudan.

Last week AGI project teams from all implementing countries met at the World Bank Headquarters in Washington, DC, for a Technical Workshop to share their recent experiences, and brain storm on what really works to help young women into work. Presentation were made by all implementing teams, as well as experts and donors like the Population Council and the Nike Foundation.

The Program Manager for AGI, Mr. K.M. Ferdous presented BRAC Southern Sudan's project design and implementation plan to the group. The project will deliver life skills and livelihood training to 3000 adolescent girls (age 15-24) across 4 states in South Sudan: Central Equitoria, Eastern Equitoria, Jonglei and Lakes. The project will establish 100 village-level Adolescent Clubs to provide safe spaces for girls and young women to socialize and receive training. A census of the identified areas has just concluded, and the baseline survey for impact evaluation is currently underway.

BRAC Southern Sudan is launching the AGI initiative at a critical time. With the referendum for independence looming, the population lives in the shadow of a two decade long civil war and severe neglect. The women and girls, who make up 55% of the population, have borne the brunt of the atrocities that come with war and poverty. Female illiteracy rates stand at 92%, while the prevalence of "bride price" makes marrying daughters a source of income, promoting early marriages and early pregnancy. The fertility rate is 6.7 while maternal mortality is among the highest in the world with over 1,700 deaths per 100,000 births.

BRAC in Southern Sudan's AGI program is focused on breaking this vicious cycle that girls in South Sudan have been locked into, and empowering them socially and financially to be confident, independent and lead dignified lives, while being advocates of change within their households and communities.

“Mobilizing and motivating is what BRAC Health Volunteers are good at doing."

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).

BRAC Pakistan’s microfinance programs first came to the Northwest Frontier Province in 2007. This paved the way for BRAC to start a health program there, starting with Nowshera. Volunteers and Health Workers were all recruited from communities where BRAC is already known to them through our pre-existing work in microfinance.


BRAC has conducted extensive door-to-door surveys in the target communities, and recruited Health Workers and Volunteers. Each Volunteer lives in proximity of the 100 - 150 households that she covers, and she visits them door-to-door and serves them inside their homes. Similar to what BRAC health volunteers successfully do in Bangladesh and other countries, Volunteers in Pakistan sell basic health products to the households under their coverage. Examples of such products include oral rehydration salts, sanitary napkins, condoms, cold and fever medicines, and other common medicines. This gives the Volunteers opportunities to earn income for their work, and effectively turns their homes into mini-dispensaries in an area where such dispensaries are sorely lacking.


The Volunteers and Health Workers were given extensive technical and field training to equip them to deliver quality services to the community. They are knowledgeable and equipped to address many common illnesses that can be treated effectively with common medicines. They are also educated on many basic health matters, such as sanitation, family planning, ante/post natal care, vaccinations, respiratory and stomach illnesses. They attend regular refresher courses to stay current on new health matters.


The Volunteers know each household they cover well, from their routine door-to-door visits to each home once to twice a month. As they have become the first point of contact for reporting any health problem in the households of the local community, they are also the first and primary source of new health information. For example, the government campaign against malaria was reinforced and made more effective in communities in Nowshera through the BRAC Volunteers that regularly serve them. BRAC adopted the messages in the government’s malaria campaigns and educated the members on these diseases through door-to-door visits to members, and at the community health forums that we organize.


Shazia Faroukh is a BRAC Health Worker in Nowshera. She learned about the opportunity with BRAC’s health program through her niece, who is a credit officer with BRAC's microfinance program. For Shazia, each working day as a Health Worker starts at 7:30 in the morning. She recently spoke extensively on malaria and dysentery to the families she covers, both at their homes as well as at community forums.


With so many health messages being projected to the community – on malaria, dysentery, immunizations, and more - by health forums and household visits by the Health Volunteers and Health Workers, are people learning what is being taught? “After educating the people on these issues, when people act on what we teach them, that pleases me the most”, she says.


Shazia also has ideas of ways in which the health program can be scaled up. “People can’t afford to go to Peshawar to purchase health commodities. It is good that BRAC’s Health Volunteers are selling commodities, and BRAC sells better quality items. But they need a larger inventory with more variety of commodities to sell. It would be good if the government gave permission to sell mosquito nets.” (Note: all items sold by the BRAC Health Volunteers require permission from the local health authorities).


“Women hate to visit male doctors. There should be more weekly or monthly medical camps with female doctors.


“This is a very conservative area of the country. Women who work as BRAC Health Volunteers are very dedicated because often have to overcome resistance from their own families for their work.”


We did find an exception where a husband strongly supports his wife’s work with the BRAC health program in Nowshera . Adnan Yousef’s wife Alia is a BRAC Health Volunteer. They heard about BRAC’s health program from the existing microfinance program there. “I like the fact that my wife works as a Health Volunteer. After we learned about disease prevention, we vaccinated our own children.” This is very encouraging to hear; in communities with conservative norms, an immunization campaign is often viewed as a government conspiracy with bad intentions.


“People often call my wife and say ‘I have a baby to deliver; please help me’,” Adnan continues. “BRAC’s Health Vounteers and Health Workers really command respect and trust of the people. I support my wife’s work in spite of family objections. There is a saying that when water drips without interruption on a rock, the rock gets smaller. I think the objections from the family will get smaller over time, too.”


In an area like the Northwest Frontier Province, where the society is very conservative, the need for women’s empowerment is even greater. BRAC is working to build trust, educate, and create awareness about the health program and the benefits and opportunities it has for them and their families. With a current base of 20 Health Volunteers in the Northwest Frontier Province, BRAC in Pakistan is looking to double the number of Volunteers to 40 in the coming months, thereby achieving a household coverage of 5,000-6,000.


Going forward, BRAC’s health program will see more joint initiatives with the local government health authorities. They are taking notice that BRAC’s Health Volunteers are effective at mobilizing communities and delivering health services to them.


BRAC in Pakistan is expanding its health program, especially in a high-risk area like the Northwest Frontier Province is a great motivating factor for the staff. “I am a man of this soil. I have the education and experience. I want to put these in service to my people,” says Qazi Faisal Zaheer, the Regional Health Coordinator for BRAC’s health program in Nowshera of the Northwest Frontier Province. He came to BRAC after a career in marketing with a pharmaceuticals company. “Mobilizing and motivating is what BRAC Health Volunteers are good at doing. When you educate a woman (i.e. the mother of a household), you educate an entire family.”

BRAC and VisionSpring Bring Better Vision to the Poor in Bangladesh

“Wait, let me get my glasses first”. How many times have we heard this expression from our colleagues, parents and friends or pronounced it ourselves? And experienced a feeling of relief as the blur of black waves turns into a legible text! Reading glasses are ubiquitous in our society: we use them when we are working, reading, watching news, etc. – so that we consider them as a basic necessity and take them as granted.

Yet, in some parts of the developing world, a pair of reading glasses can be a hard-to-access luxury, available in expensive optic shops in urban areas. This means that millions of men and women lose a great part of their economic productivity, not to mention emotional well-being, as the acuteness of their vision decreases with age. A lot of young people with a weak vision have to forego opportunities to be engaged in certain professions such as jewelry or weaving, or cannot advance in education because of limited reading.

Jhili, for example, is a single mother who lives in Bangladesh makes her living as a master embroiderer. As she reached her thirties, she started to suffer headaches and could not do her intricate work as fast and well as she used to. Her income started to decline and she started to fear for her children’s well being.

VisionSpring and BRAC started a partnership in Bangladesh to bring the simple yet necessary instrument – reading glasses - to the people at the bottom of the pyramid. BRAC has a unique network of over 88,000 community health volunteers (Shastho Shabikas) who are trained in managing common illnesses and in preventive healthcare. These women visit over 250 households per month providing basic healthcare services as well as selling healthcare products at small margins. This is an excellent way of bringing primary healthcare to the doors of poor people at the same time creating economic livelihood opportunities for the health volunteers.

BRAC is providing additional training and portable instruments to Shastho Shabikas to measure eye vision and prescribe eyeglasses that they carry in their vision kits. The average cost of a pair of glasses is $1.80, and the women make about 20c from each sale.

For Jhili the help came when she most needed it. The pair of glasses that she bought from BRAC’s community health volunteer, adjusted her vision and she resumed her beautiful craft of embroidering saris.

Empowering Women and Children for Global Health at Star Island's 2010 International Affairs Conference

This article has also been published on The Huffington Post.

On Monday, I had the opportunity to speak at Star Island’s 2010 International Affairs Conference on the rock shoal of Star Island off the coast of New Hampshire. It was a very moving experience as I got the chance to interact with a unique group of people -- generations of families who have been traveling to Star Island for years, enthusiastically learning new things from leading academics and practitioners working in international development in a relaxing and beautiful natural environment.

This year, the Conference focused on “Empowering Women and Children for Global Health” with a focus on the growing perspective that the world’s health care challenges can be met by promoting and empowering women and children. Along with Donna Barry of Partners in Health, Ann Cotton of CAMFED and other experts in the field, I was asked to share my experiences about social entrepreneurship, microfinance and the empowerment of women. While the participants had read Kristof and WuDunn’s Half the Sky and Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea, most of this learned audience had not yet heard of BRAC and its remarkable story and holistic approach to development. They were interested to know about Ian Smillie’s book on BRAC, Freedom From Want, as well as my new book, Social Entrepreneurship, co-authored with David Bornstein (and even carried it in their bookstore on the island!).

Among other things, I spoke of the power of social entrepreneurship as an idea that is changing the world, microfinance as the most significant development strategy in the last three decades, women as the key to change, and the major societal change that is possible and in fact taking place in our lifetimes. I advocated that the way to change the world is to change ourselves. I shared BRAC’s holistic development approach and talked about our efforts in Bangladesh to reduce maternal mortality and improve child health. BRAC’s Manoshi project, for example, operates community-based interventions in the urban slums of 6 city corporations, currently covering a population of about 5.7 million people. The 5 year project, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, aims to reduce maternal, neonatal and child deaths and diseases by instituting delivery centers, community midwives, linkages to public and private health facilities, community health workers and urban birth attendants.

Started in 2007, the project has already seen great successes: before the project 86% of deliveries in the slums took place at home. In 2009, only 25% of deliveries took place at home, with 33% in BRAC delivery centers and 42% in hospitals. Though the project faces many challenges, including migrations, poor sanitation and challenges with community support, we at BRAC are encouraged by the results we have seen so far in maternal mortality rates and growing awareness.

Thank you to the families at Star Island who invited me to speak and showed me a great couple of days! I enjoyed discussing the issues with you and partaking in your time-honored traditions.

-Susan

BRAC and the Economics of Microfinance

In their recent book Economics of Microfinance, 2nd Edition, Jonathan Murdoch and Beatriz Armendariz commend BRAC as

“ … perhaps the most fully realized “integrated” provider, offering financial services along with schools, legal training, productive inputs, and help with marketing and business planning. If you are in Dhaka these days, for example, you can buy Aarong brand chocolate milk, which is produced by a BRAC dairy marketing affiliate. A different BRAC subsidiary produces Aarong brand textiles made by poor weavers, and still another subsidiary runs craft shops that sell the goods of microfinance clients.”

BRAC’s development philosophy was not merely born out of elegant macroeconomic theories. It was also dug out of the harsh ground with the calloused hands of the farmers in Bangladesh, watered with the sweat of children laboring in the sun and kneaded with the hands of mothers making their daily bread.

BRAC thought leaders constantly evaluated their efforts, acted and erred, fixed errors and acted again. BRAC realized that in the context of poverty unidirectional investments are only short-term band-aids, they help but they do not heal. The child that you save from illiteracy dies from diarrhea; the adolescent girl you treated and educated weds at 14 not managing to fully realize her potential.

The micro-credit loan you give a mother of three will allow her to buy seeds for her small land to feed her family, but nobody supplies high quality seeds so her income improvement will be marginal. If a woman’s husband dies in an accident, her in-laws can take their property pushing her back to destitution because she may not know her rights.

The claws of poverty are very tight and BRAC fights it on all fronts in order to empower people to bring themselves out of its grasp. BRAC builds schools and sends the most talented children to BRAC University, the organization trains and pays community health volunteers to serve the villages, offers microsavings and microcredit to the poor and trains them on enterprise development.

BRAC contracts farmers to process high-quality seeds to improve the agricultural yields, builds livestock artificial insemination centers to enhance the breed of cows and bulls and produces feed for poultry and livestock. BRAC builds flood shelters and delivers relief to minimize the losses of natural calamities. The organization trains the poor on their legal and civic rights to give them voice. It also spreads social messages (like family planning, dowry elimination) that serve to empower women and disadvantaged groups.

The “small is beautiful” ideology was overshadowed by BRAC Founder Sir Fazle Hasan Abed’s ‘’big is necessary,” and big it is. BRAC’s programs have touched the lives of over 138 million people More than 8 million women are involved in BRAC’s Village Organizations that serve as platform for microfinance and other integral services. More than 6 million children are attending or have graduated from BRAC's primary and secondary schools.

An important part of "growing big" and strengthening impact was not only BRAC's expansion into other countries but the replication of BRAC's successful models such as the Targeting the Ultra Poor (TUP) by other organizations. As Murdoch and Armendariz put it,

"BRAC has served as an important model for microfinance institutions in other countries hoping to reach the bottom of the pyramid. Programs including SKS and Bandhan in India and Fonkoze in Haiti have launched replications of TUP (Targeting the Ultra Poor)...[that] share the fundamental approach of targeting and subsidizing the poorest of the poor.... For $135 per participant, BRAC aimed to forever remove the need for participants to require future handouts. The evolution of the Targeting the Ultra Poor programs signals the challenge of reaching that goal, but the overall vision behind the program remains compelling"

By Meri Poghosyan

Click here to buy Economics of Microfinance, 2nd Edition on Amazon.

BRAC in Afghanistan: Quietly Making Large Impact

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.

With its trademark multi-sector operations in the country, BRAC is now the largest NGO operating in Afghanistan. BRAC Afghanistan is following the path of BRAC Bangladesh to become a fully-scaled up NGO with interventions across multiple sectors to attack the various causes of poverty and create nation-wide impact. BRAC in Bangladesh became an NGO conglomerate over its 38-year history, with great depth and breadth of development activities. BRAC Afghanistan is thirty years younger than BRAC Bangladesh, but the same is in the making in Afghanistan too.

Eight years since starting out, BRAC Afghanistan now employs over 3,400 people across five programs – microfinance, health, education, capacity building & training, and the National Solidarity Program. BRAC has a nationwide footprint, with at least one program in all 34 provinces of Afghanistan. Afghans make up about 3,200 of the total staff, and their ethnic make-up is diverse – Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, etc. Over 40% of the staff is comprised of Afghan women. BRAC Afghanistan’s work in aggregate impacts over 12 million people in the country.

BRAC is also a force in cultivating Afghanistan’s SME sector. In 2006 BRAC founded BRAC Bank Afghanistan (BBA), a full service bank with an SME focus. To date, the bank has made over $35 million in loans to 6,000 customers.

It goes without saying that the security situation makes it difficult to operate in Afghanistan. Staff members have been held up at gunpoint before. One branch of BRAC Bank Afghanistan was actually attacked by a group of armed men, resulting in a firefight with the police as the branch staff remained holed up inside (fortunately, no staff members were hurt). Challenges there are many, too many to list here. But in the face of these challenges, BRAC staff in Afghanistan has been resilient. It is their resilience that will grow BRAC Afghanistan into an even larger organization creating greater impact.

Speaking to the youthful staff, BRAC to them is less a Bangladeshi organization and more a home-grown one in Afghanistan. Tameem, a manager at BRAC Bank Afghanistan, said “I have to work hard and study hard. Someday I want to be the Managing Director of this bank.”

Naila is the Bank’s Compliance Manager. She spent the last seven years working during the day while attending school at night to earn her BBA degree. She is the first person in her family to take up a career in banking. “I am hopeful about the future,” she says. “There is big potential for BRAC Bank in Afghanistan.”

A part of Afghanistan’s rebuilding effort is the “South-South collaboration,” and BRAC Afghanistan is at the forefront of it. About 200 of 3,400 total staff at BRAC Afghanistan are Bangladeshis who honed their field expertise through their work with BRAC in Bangladesh. They are starting and running programs, developing capacity, and cultivating people so BRAC becomes a 100% locally managed development organization in Afghanistan. The flow of personnel is not just one-way; Afghan managers also travel to Bangladesh for advance training with BRAC, matriculatation in public health degree programs at BRAC University in Dhaka, etc. They return to Afghanistan to commence their work with BRAC there at the completion of their education and training.

This form of “South-South collaboration” has had spillover effects in other countries. Over the last nine years, many Bangladeshis who were replaced by qualified Afghan staff have moved on to other post-conflict countries where BRAC also operates. With field experience from both Bangladesh and Afghanistan, such colleagues are now starting up and managing BRAC programs in places such as Uganda, Tanzania, Southern Sudan, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Haiti, and Pakistan.

Regardless of what debate rages among the media or inside the Beltway over Afghanistan, the 3,400+ staff of BRAC Afghanistan quietly carry on with their work at all 34 provinces of the country. They are credit officers, Community Health Workers, teachers of BRAC’s community based schools, trainers at BRAC’s Training and Resource Center, managers of the National Solidarity Program, loan officers of BRAC Bank Afghanistan, and much more.

BRAC Intern, Sharon Kim, Reports from Uganda

This post was written by Sharon Kim, a research and program development intern for BRAC Uganda and a current Masters student in international educational development at Teachers College, Columbia University.

My summer internship with BRAC Uganda has given me the opportunity to research issues of gender dynamics and rights violations against girls and women. This has allowed me to travel around to different areas of the country to observe and work with females directly or indirectly involved in the Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents (ELA) programs.

Admittedly, the process of engaging in qualitative research has felt a bit like groping around in the dark without a flashlight, which is really appropriate considering that's quite literally what you end up doing at least once a week here when the power goes out. It's been difficult not to feel this way as I've been out in the field. When you're trying to get a group of adolescent girls and women to open up to you, it's a bit of a by-any-means-necessary process to earn their trust. I had to be willing to humiliate myself a bit in order to win over the groups - singing songs on request, embarrassingly poor attempts to emulate the local dances (of which there is thankfully no evidence) - you name it. However, I figured it was a fair trade-off: a bit of my dignity for a bit of their trust.

At the end of the day, it's been a process about connecting or finding some commonality from which to work. Though I may never be able to go back and aptly express this to the girls and women I've been speaking with, I believe we all learned a little bit about what it's like to stand out in a crowd - unintentionally for me, and perhaps for them, quite intentionally. The fact that I was roasting to a nice, toasty shade of brown didn't seem to mitigate the fact that my mere presence would scream ODD SPECTACLE HERE in some sort of bright, blinking neon sign over my head. However, for these women who felt overwhelmed by the river of problems they face, which becomes a mere drop in an ocean of others who face them, an opportunity to stand out and be heard turned out to be very welcome.

The process lent a good dose of perspective on the purpose of the work we do in development. The desire for large-scale, systemic change is always there. But, it's important not to forget how much people, especially these girls and women, want to be acknowledged as unique individuals rather than the sum of the problems they collectively face. I certainly won't be able to provide that opportunity to everyone. However, gauging from some of the responses I've been getting, I hope that I've been able to offer some semblance of affirmation to those who were seeking it.

BRAC University's James P. Grant School of Public Health Now Accepting Applications from International Students

BRAC University James P Grant School of Public Health (JPGSPH) is now accepting applications from International students for its Master of Public Health (MPH) Program.

The James P Grant School of Public Health, established in 2004, has a diverse student body with international and national students each year in its MPH program. In addition to Bangladesh, students are recruited from Asia, Africa, Australia and South America as well as countries from the North (Canada, Germany, Japan and USA). In the last six years, a total of 159 students joined the program from 19 different countries: Afghanistan, Australia, Bolivia, Canada, Ethiopia, Germany, India, Japan, Kenya, Liberia, Myanmar, Nepal, Netherlands, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Tanzania, Uganda and USA. James P Grant School of Public Health is recognized as one of the preeminent educational institutions in the world by World Health Organization (WHO).

The School is the product of a strong collaboration between BRAC University, BRAC, BRAC International and the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR, B). The School has faculty and research partnerships with Harvard University, George Washington University, Columbia University, and Johns Hopkins University in the United States; the University of Ottawa in Canada; the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the Institute for Development Studies, and the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom; the Karolinska Institute in Sweden; the University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands; Heidelberg University in Germany; the University of Nagasaki in Japan; and Kerala & TISS in Mumbai, India.

As of last year, 136 students graduated from the School, with many working in reputed international and national institutions, UN agencies, donor organizations and government. In addition, universities and research organizations around the world also employ a good number of the School's MPH graduates. Some graduates are also PhD candidates studying in a variety of internationally acclaimed universities, including Columbia University, George Washington University, Harvard University, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, University of Adelaide, University of California-Davis, etc.

Partial tuition waivers are available for students from developing countries, based on merit and financial need.

For the Call for Admissions for 2011, the application deadline is: September 12, 2010. Application forms may be downloaded from the website.

For more information, please check the program leaflet.

Partner Organizations Fund BRAC Limb and Brace Center in Haiti

Through a combination of grants from Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, American Jewish World Service, Child Relief International, and Grapes for Humanity/US, BRAC will soon be opening a Limb and Brace Center in Haiti. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that the number injured by the January 12th earthquake in Haiti earthquake is between 200,000 and 250,000 people. The number of people who needed amputations as a result of their injuries is estimated to be between 2,000 and 4,000. BRAC has over a decade of experience running a limb and brace center in Bangladesh and will leverage that knowledge to provide low cost ICRC approved prosthetic and orthotic services to 1,500 Haitians in the first year of operations.

By providing artificial limbs and braces to the poor, especially in this time of extreme need and desperation, BRAC can help to reduce the burden on the families of physically disabled individuals by increasing their ability to participate in daily life and other social and economic activities, thereby allowing Haitian citizens to begin rebuilding their nation. BRAC’s Limb and Brace Center will also provide information, education, and counseling service to the disabled and their family members.

Through partnerships with Handicap International, Partners in Health and other health care providers, BRAC will receive appropriate referrals to ensure that low income amputees receive service, particularly recent earthquake victims. BRAC staff will prepare appropriate materials in Creole, French and English to notify medical staff and the general public about the Center such as leaflets, posters, and if needed, advertisements in the newspapers, magazines, and on radio.

Given the shortage in Haiti of trained physical therapists, BRAC-trained specialists have been deployed to provide training to the Haitian staff in physiotherapy. Within two years the center will be Haitian run and staffed, in addition to manufacturing and repairing prosthetics and orthotics on-site. BRAC is also partnering with volunteers from the US and Diaspora community in its rehabilitation efforts.

Sir Fazle Abed's Chapter in IFPRI Vision 2020 Book

A recent IFPRI (International Food Poverty Research Institute) publication "The poorest and hungry: assessments, analyses, and actions", features a chapter by BRAC's founder Sir Fazle Hasan Abed.

"Microfinance Interventions to Enable the Poorest to Improve Their Asset Base" is a thoughtful commentary on the potential of microfinance-based approaches to alleviate poverty. Through the spectrum of BRAC's decades of experience in Bangladesh, sir Abed explains how microfinance works, what are its possibilities and limitations and how they may be overcome. He describes BRAC's innovative "Targeting the Ultra Poor" program which resulted from the realization that the extremely poor households remain out of reach because of many socio-economic constraints. "The ultra poor need a “ladder” so they can climb up to a level of poverty at which, through microfinance,they can work toward emerging from poverty", he says. Thus BRAC gives them productive assets and stipends for two years, allowing them to transfer from "ultra poverty" to "tolerable poverty" so that they can become regular microfinance clients.

This nurturing approach stems from the fact that BRAC is not in essence a microfinance organization, it is a development organization and microfinance serves as a tool and platform for its development work. BRAC famous "Microfinance Plus Plus" model "provides support in the form of linkages along the different points of a microenterprise’s supply chain". BRAC connects borrowers to enterprise, provides inputs, and helps market their products. BRAC's microfinance groups serve as platforms to train community health volunteers, to train women on legal rights, to spread social messages, etc.

A big advocate for scaling-up ("Small may be beautiful but large is necessary"), Sir Abed wraps up the chapter by advising on how to address expansion constraints.

You can access the full chapter on IFPRI website.

By Meri Poghosyan

Watch an interview with Sir Fazle Hasan Abed on BBC World News on Thursday July 8

Sir Fazle Hasan Abed:'Change culture which keeps women subjugated'

Watch an interview with Sir Fazle Hasan Abed on BBC. Sir Fazle has spent much of his life trying to improve the lives of the world's poorest people. In the process he has created BRAC - arguably the world's biggest development organisation. From its home in Bangladesh, to Afghanistan and Africa BRAC has tied development to social change and economic self-help.

You can watch this HARDtalk interview on BBC World News on Thursday July 8 at 0330, 0830, 1530 and 2030 GMT or follow this link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/hardtalk/8798513.stm

"Measuring the Impact of Microfinance: Taking Another Look"

Grameen Foundation, J.P. Morgan and WAM-NY recently presented a panel discussion on poverty reduction using microfinance. At the event, Grameen Foundation released a review of the most recent research examining the effects of microfinance on the lives on the poor. The review titled "Measuring the Impact of Microfinance: Taking Another Look" written by Kathleen Odell, updates the conclusions drawn in a 2005 Grameen Foundation white paper titled "Measuring the Impact of Microfinance: Taking Stock of What We Know".

While the first review examines the first two decades of microfinance impact, the recently published review focuses on research conducted in the last five years. The Odell paper focuses on two major advances within the microfinance sector. The first major advance is the application of the RCT (Randomized Control Trial) study methodology to the sector. The second major advance is that the recent research expands on the traditional interpretation of microfinance as solely microcredit. Of these studies, two focus on microloan programs in Hyderabad and Manila and the third focuses on a microsavings program in Kenya.

As the studies were conducted in a relatively short period of time, conclusive results cannot be drawn in regards to the impact of microfinance on social measures such as education and health. These studies do however suggest a positive impact on business in regards to the rate and size of investment. The conclusions drawn by the paper suggest that we need more studies and long-term studies of the social impact of MFIs.

The discussion surrounding the paper proved highly controversial. Many of the questions directed at the panel were centered around the effectiveness of MFIs and the ethical considerations of interest rates within the sector. The consensus is that microfinance is successful in that it provides strong institutions. The access to the financial services that these institutions provide helps businesses to better manage shocks. In regards to concerns about the effectiveness of microfinance, Camilla Nestor, VP of Microfinance Programs at the Grameen Foundation stressed that "we cannot expect microfinance institutions to put children into school [just as] we cannot expect immunizations to help businesses”. In this sense, microfinance cannot be viewed "as a panacea" in the words of Christina Leijonhufvud, Director of the Social Sector Finance at JP Morgan Chase, but rather as a tool of financial inclusion.

In regards to the ethical considerations of microfinance interest rates, many questions were raised about profit margins. The panel was quick to emphasize the difficulty in answering this question. When thinking about interest rates, one must consider not only the cost of capital in a given region but also the way in which the profits are used.

One proposed resource to better understand how interest rates are set is www.mftransparency.org. This organization is currently in the process of mapping interest rates in various countries against a curve. Another proposed option is interest rate caps. This idea, however, was not favored by the panel experts because interest rate caps tend to hurt the poorest the most by creating barriers to the sustainability of MFIs. The experts would like to see that interest rates be determined by competition rather than regulation. One audience member expressed concern about what is being done for those who do not qualify for microfinance or in other words the ultra poor. Professor Jonathon Morduch emphasized that many programs are being implemented to answer this question such as BRAC's ultra poor program in Bangladesh.

As the microfinance sector grows, more and more questions and concerns will be raised. It is important to bear in mind that each population and region is unique. As Kathleen Odell cautioned, we must avoid an oversimplification of the challenges facing the field as well as an over generalization of the results that we have seen in the most recent studies.