BRAC International recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the Bihar Government’s Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society to launch Satat Jeevikoparjan Yojana Shahari, the first government-led urban Graduation programme in Asia. Credit: BRAC

By Rina Mukherji
PUNE, INDIA, Aug 30 2023 (IPS)

In a bid to tackle the complexities of urban poverty, the Government of Bihar’s Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society (BRLPS) has launched Satat Jeevikoparjan Yojana Shahari (SJY Urban). The program will include a time-bound series of multifaceted interventions addressing food security, social inclusion, and sustainable economic livelihoods to enable participating households to achieve a better standard of living.

As part of this program, BRLPS has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with BRAC International, which will serve as a thought partner to the Government of Bihar for the project development and also is building a consortium of partners to support the government in its implementation. Project Concern International (PCI), for example, is taking on management responsibilities and will also host thematic workshops across departments and with civil society experts to support inclusive learning and dialogue.

Mobile Creches will create a community cadre of childcare providers who will support maternal and child health. They have a 50-year-old history of providing childcare support, maternal and nutritional health, and WASH training to urban women in the slums of Delhi, Mumbai, and Pune. Quicksand will support the learning process to consolidate the design through ethnographic methods, prototyping, and other design elements. These learnings will help inform the project about the fabric of each respective urban community and provide a feedback loop once the rollout starts.

SJY Urban was inspired by the existing rural programme, Satat Jeevikoparjan Yojana (SJY), locally known as JEEVIKA, the largest government-led Graduation programme in the world, which has reached over 150,000 households as of early 2023 and is still expanding. SJY Urban is modelled on the rural programme’s six basic modules: 1) Building up the aspirations and confidence of households; 2) Financial Inclusion; 3) Improvement of Health, Nutrition, and Sanitation; 4) Social Development; 5) Livelihood generation; and 6) Government Convergence.

While taking inspiration from JEEVIKA, the Urban Programme will be adapted to respond to the unique challenges people in poverty face within the urban context.

“Urban poverty is complex and inadequately addressed,” said Shweta S Banerjee, Country Lead – India, BRAC International. “SJY Shahari is a unique project in the many challenges it has accepted, including supporting project participants during extreme heat waves. BRAC is excited and committed to serving as a thought partner to the Government of Bihar as we take the time to test, learn, relearn, and deploy the project design.”

Applying Learnings from the Rural Programme to the Urban

The 36-month SJY Urban Programme will be launched in five wards in Patna and five wards in Gaya for now and will be scaled up in a year’s time. Given the unique challenges in urban settings, where research and solutions are more limited in comparison to rural settings, the programme will incorporate learnings from the SJY programme.

“In keeping with the requirements in an urban setting, we intend to provide improved skill sets in carpentry, plumbing, welding, and the like that can help workers access better employment opportunities both within and outside Bihar. For instance, there are around 50,000 to 100,000 Bihar workers in the Tiruppur hosiery industry. We intend to provide them with the necessary skill certification through the National Skill Development Council,” Jeevika CEO Rahul Kumar told IPS.

Designed with a focus on women’s empowerment, SJY has made a pronounced difference for people living in extreme poverty in Bihar, particularly through inclusive livelihood development and access to financial security through self-help groups (SHGs). The urban programme will also utilise SHGs to improve financial opportunities along with sustainable livelihood options.

While the livelihood options are different, there is still a great opportunity for skill development for people living in urban poverty. JEEVIKA plans to pursue livelihoods for participants through conventional entrepreneurship, building up specific skills for trades, and partnerships with public utilities. The existing bank sakhi programme, a program that has trained rural women to assist customers in opening accounts and other administrative bank-related services, as part of JEEVIKA, saw 2,500 bank sakhis leverage Rs 10,000 crore in business for various banks.

According to Rahul Kumar, the bank sakhi programme could be introduced in across Bihar and offer additional financial products such as insurance and mutual funds.

There are also climate-responsive livelihoods that have been utilised in the rural programme that can work for an urban setting as well, such as waste management, recycling of waste, and the use of e-rickshaws. With climate change contributing to rapid urbanisation across Asia and driving millions more into poverty, affecting those furthest behind first, sustainable, resilient livelihood development will be a critical component of SJY Urban. The programme will work to further enhance resilience among participants by providing them with resources and training to develop food security and social inclusion.

Creating a Stronger Ecosystem Through Convergence

Similar to the rural programme, SJY Urban will bring together different existing government schemes and agencies to best serve those living in extreme poverty. The programme will also leverage the existing enterprises within the rural programme and promote them in the urban programme as well, such as market poultry and dairy products.

There are existing livelihood initiatives that rural participants are driving forward, such as running nurseries across the state, which have provided saplings to the Environment, Forest, and Climate Change Department for planting. These saplings can be used by urban plantations and gardens that are also under the department. Similarly, there are kiosk carts that sell Neera or palm nectar that are processed and made by JEEVIKA participants. There is an opportunity to expand this enterprise to the urban setting as well.

JEEVIKA will also engage other government agencies to support the design and implementation of the urban programme. Most recently, JEEVIKA and BRAC convened an inaugural workshop in preparation for launching the Urban Poor Graduation Project, in collaboration with the Departments of Urban Development and Housing, Labour Resources, Social Welfare, Women and Child Development Corporation. The workshop brought together government representatives and experts with diverse sectoral expertise to reflect on existing solutions for urban poverty and share key insights that could help inform the design and delivery of the Urban Poor Graduation Project. The workshop also brought together practitioners and leveraged knowledge from Graduation-based programmes outside Bihar and India.

The shared expertise and convergence in existing government schemes and partnerships will allow the programme to address unique challenges facing the urban environment and enhance coordination, which will ultimately improve overall impact.

Challenges and Learning Opportunities in an Urban Environment

This will be one of the first urban Graduation programmes at scale that combine skills development and livelihood support to alleviate urban poverty.

The unique constraints presented by the urban environment in Bihar, such as limited land availability, the migratory nature of the population in urban poor neighbourhoods, and heatwaves impacting the ability to work, present an opportunity to learn and adapt programming further to test what works.

“The kind of social cohesion prevalent in rural areas is lacking in urban centres. This makes social mobilisation, on which the programme rests, a difficult task,” Kumar said.

The first phase in designing the programme, along with the learnings from the first cohort of participants, will offer valuable insights on how to combat the challenges of those living in urban poverty face. Such learnings can then be shared across the Global South to support broader efforts to respond to rapid urbanisation and an increase in urban poverty.

SJY Urban is poised to move head-on, with its consultants scheduled to hammer out a clear strategy in the coming months. In a year’s time, Kumar says the programme aims to cover all 240 urban local bodies in the state.
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Shweta S Banerjee, Country Lead for India, and Syed M Hashemi, Country Advisor for India at BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative, joined members of the Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society, including CEO Rahul Kumar, to sign the MoU in Patna, India. Credit: BRAC UPGI

By IPS Correspondent
PATNA, India, Apr 10 2023 (IPS)

Under the Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society, Bihar’s government announced the development of a new Program for Immersion and Learning Exchange (ILE) to be headquartered in Patna.

The Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society, locally known as JEEVIKA, is the implementing agency of Satat Jeevikoparjan Yojana (SJY), a government-led poverty alleviation program in Bihar that has reached over 150,000 households as of early 2023 and is still expanding.

SJY aims to boost the human capital of people living in extreme poverty and the most excluded households through the Graduation approach, an evidence-based, multifaceted, sequenced set of interventions that includes support of consumption, livelihoods, savings, and training. A rigorous study of Graduation in West Bengal by Nobel Laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo demonstrates that Graduation provides people with the resources and skills needed to break the poverty trap.

“This a new beginning,” said Rahul Kumar, CEO of JEEVIKA. “JEEVIKA will function as an Immersion and Learning Centre for delegates outside state and country to understand our Graduation Program.”

Drawing on vast experience in supporting the design, delivery, and evaluation of Graduation programs worldwide for more than 20 years, BRAC International will serve as a technical partner for the ILE.

“BRAC International is honored to partner with the Bihar state government to launch an Immersion and Learning Exchange program at JEEVIKA so many more can learn from the Government of Bihar’s experience building inclusive livelihoods for marginalized women,” said Gregory Chen, Managing Director of BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative (UPGI), a flagship program of BRAC International.

Rahul Kumar, CEO of Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society, signs an MoU with BRAC International to facilitate South-South knowledge sharing around the Graduation approach through a new Program for Immersion and Learning Exchange.

Since 2002, BRAC’s Graduation program in Bangladesh has reached more than 2.1 million households (approximately 9 million people) and supported the expansion of Graduation in 16 additional countries through direct implementation, technical assistance, and advisory services for implementing partners and governments. BRAC is committed to further advancing the expansion of Graduation by scaling it through governments across Africa and Asia to achieve maximum impact.

Learning and knowledge exchange has played a critical role in supporting adaptation and expansion efforts of the Graduation approach for various poverty contexts since it was pioneered in 2002. To date, more than 100 organizations in nearly 50 countries have adopted Graduation, according to the World Bank’s Partnership for Economic Inclusion.

Through immersion visits and learning exchange facilitated by JEEVIKA’s ILE, insights around the design, implementation, and evaluation of Graduation will be more accessible to other state governments in India and national governments throughout the Global South looking to enhance existing poverty alleviation efforts and enable millions more people around the world to escape the poverty trap.

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Jean Claude Muhire, Rwanda Program Director of BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative, a flagship program at BRAC International, and Samuel Dusengiyumva, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Local Government sign the MoU in Kigali, Rwanda. Credit BRAC UPGI.

By Joyce Chimbi
KIGALI, Mar 21 2023 (IPS)

Last week, BRAC International signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Government of Rwanda under the Ministry of Local Government (MINALOC) to support efforts to empower people in extreme poverty to develop sustainable livelihoods and break the poverty trap long term. This is part of the Government’s broader efforts to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030.

“I am delighted to see the Government of Rwanda take a leadership role in addressing extreme poverty,” said Greg Chen, Managing Director of BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative (UPGI), a flagship program at BRAC International.

The four essentials of the Graduation approach and initial outcomes. Credit: BRAC UPGI.

The MoU was signed on Tuesday, March 14, 2023, by Jean Claude Muhire, Rwanda Program Director of BRAC UPGI, and Samuel Dusengiyumva, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Local Government.

BRAC International is a leading nonprofit organization with a mission to empower people and communities in poverty, illiteracy, disease, and social injustice, touching the lives of more than 100 million people in the last five decades. And now seeks to touch even more lives in the land of a thousand hills through this partnership.

“We are happy to serve as a partner in advancing the Government of Rwanda’s new National Strategy for Sustainable Graduation (NSSG) and to accelerate the reduction of poverty and extreme poverty,” said Muhire.

The MoU positions BRAC International as a key partner in advancing the Government of Rwanda’s new National Strategy for Sustainable Graduation (NSSG), recently approved by Cabinet in November 2022 to accelerate the reduction of poverty and extreme poverty in Rwanda and contribute to the achievement of the targets set out in the National Strategy for Transformation, 2017 to 2024.

“We are committed to combating extreme poverty by scaling the multifaceted, evidence-based Graduation approach through governments across Africa and Asia and reaching millions more people,” Chen said.

Similar to BRAC’s Graduation approach, which was established in Bangladesh in 2002, the NSSG defines Graduation as a two-year program for households to benefit from inclusive livelihood development programs, multifaceted interventions, access to shock-responsive social protection services, and market access that creates an enabling environment for households to “graduate” out of extreme poverty.

To date, BRAC’s Graduation program has reached more than 2.1 million people in Bangladesh alone and supported the expansion of Graduation in 16 additional countries, including Afghanistan, Egypt, Guinea, India, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Pakistan, Philippines, Rwanda, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zambia.

Leveraging 20 years of experience implementing, testing, and iterating the Graduation approach, BRAC International is extending support in the design, delivery as well as evaluation of the Graduation program to Rwanda, supporting the Ministry of Local Government in critical areas.

Areas such as providing technical capacity and expertise in the implementation of the Graduation strategy and making available necessary communication, advocacy, and technical resources to ensure smooth implementation of the Graduation strategy.

Equally important, collaborating with the Ministry will ensure the scale-up of an inclusive, holistic Graduation strategy that includes all Graduation essentials. In all, efforts will focus on the four essential components identified as fundamental to implementing Graduation successfully.

These essential components include meeting participants’ day-to-day needs such as nutrition and healthcare, providing training and assets for income generation, financial literacy and savings support, and social empowerment through community engagement and life skills training – all facilitated through coaching that calls for regular interactions with participants. Rigorous research by Nobel Laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo proves that the combination of support and resources provided through this multifaceted approach is critical for long-term impact.

Overall, the Graduation approach is grounded in the conviction that people living in vulnerable situations can be agents of change if they are empowered with the tools, skills, and hope they need to change their lives.

Perhaps with such people-centered efforts to scale an evidence-based approach, Rwanda could become known for more than its scenic beauty and clean capital city. It could also make history by becoming one of the first countries on the continent to establish a sustainable path out of extreme poverty by 2030.

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A girl reads a story book with lessons on life skills at an ELA club in Uganda. Credit: Uganda/BRAC

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 22 2023 (IPS)

BRAC’s Empowerment and Livelihood Program (ELA) has benefitted tens of thousands of girls, and its recently released report shows an organization willing to adapt to the circumstances to continue to ensure adolescent girls and young women receive meaningful sexual and reproductive health rights support.

The report titled Adolescent Empowerment at a scale: Successes and challenges of an evidence-based approach to young women’s programming in Africa was launched on February 15, 2023, at a BRAC  and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) jointly hosted event. The report was written with the support of the Spotlight Initiative, an UN-led, multi-partner initiative that aims to respond to and eliminate violence against women and girls, with a particular focus on family and intimate partner violence, sexual and gender-based violence, and harmful practices.

The history of BRAC’s Empowerment and Livelihood Program (ELA), which was designed to provide sexual and reproductive health education and livelihood training to adolescent girls and young women, is covered in the report. The program was launched in Uganda in 2006 and has since been implemented in Sierra Leone, South Sudan, and Liberia. During the program’s peak from 2013 to 2015, BRAC hosted over 1800 clubs with over 80,000 members.

“The reason that we partnered with BRAC, [and] have partnered with them in the field… is because of the incredible work that they do in this very efficient, kind of way,” said moderator Satvika Chalasani, a Technical Specialist for UNFPA who oversees programs for adolescent girls and ending child marriage.

BRAC’s report Adolescent Empowerment at a scale: Successes and challenges of an evidence-based approach to young women’s programming in Africa talks about its successes and also the need to change programs to ensure their success in a changing society. Credit: BRAC

Chalasani observed that BRAC had gotten to tens of thousands of women on the African continent through their program, Empowerment, and Livelihood for Adolescents, and it was important to learn from their experiences of 15 years in the field.

Willibald Zeck, UNFPA’s Chief of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, also noted BRAC’s record with youth empowerment programs in his opening remarks while adding that demographic changes in certain regions have influenced how such programs must be designed and implemented. It is estimated that over 60% of Africa’s population is under 25.

“As you know, in UNFPA, we really work across the continuum of sexual reproductive health and rights… And we see in certain regions around the globe the new demographics that are showing that there will be more adolescents in the population, but especially on the African continent. Which is a great opportunity in so many ways, but it also brings more challenges.”

Sarah Tofte, a research and policy consultant, and the report’s primary author, presented her findings, breaking down the program’s initial model and implementation and its eventual reset and adaptations.

The report includes findings from academic evaluations conducted by experts, randomized control trials (RCTs) conducted in the regions where ELA programs were hosted, and nearly 100 field interviews with participants and ELA staff.

The findings reveal an overall positive reception and impact on participants and their communities.

Tofte, the co-founder of Understory Consulting, a research and policy consulting firm, noted that the interviewees reported a greater, newfound sense of self through the ELA program, which they connected to making well-informed decisions and contributing productively to the community.

“So based on these positive academic results, and then what I was hearing from field interviews and what participants have been saying over many years, ELA really became a model for other adolescent and youth empowerment programming around the globe, including at the World Bank and at USAID.”

As the report explains, implementation challenges would surface as the program continued. Tofte, the co-founder, noted that while the program’s initial results had been positive, it had slowly ceased to achieve its intended impact.

“By 2017, anecdotal reports had emerged within BRAC about lagging performance of ELA clubs in several countries, including drops in attendance and gaps in the delivery of programming,” she said.

The decline in the program quality and the resulting challenge of sustaining the program over long periods of time also made it difficult to secure funding that would have gone toward addressing the decline. The program had become repetitive for some participants and staff, and issues of deeper community engagement had presented a hurdle for the program’s success.

In 2020, ELA would undergo a “reset” significantly through making fundamental and necessary changes to the curriculum. This would not only update the discussions on reproductive health and livelihood training but would make it more relevant to the economic and social circumstances of the girls they were intended for – while placing more emphasis on providing vocational and livelihood training and financial literacy. Other changes to the curriculum included adjusting the weekly ELA club meetings to optimize engagement and a new graduation model for students to leave the program after one year of completion. The resets were applied at a reduced scale to approximately 140 clubs in the countries where ELA programs were already present.

“Early feedback from this curriculum revamp from the participants suggest that the new curriculum is well received by participants and is driving a positive outcome in attendance and program impact,” Tofte said.

The ELA program adjustments are critical to modernizing the curriculum. What should be of note were the considerations taken to improve community engagement.

“Another big focus of the reset was to deepen community engagement. Prior, a lack of formalized mechanisms for community engagement resulted in some pushback at times from parents of community members who may not have fully bought into the ELA model,” Tofte said. She added that in some cases, the pushback was targeted at the sexual and reproductive health components when the content went against community norms around matters such as child marriage and sexual health.

In response, BRAC, through ELA, has taken measures to establish formal channels with community stakeholders and parents of the participants. By directly engaging with the community’s village elders, religious leaders, and other respected community members, ELA staff members can obtain their support before establishing a program. Formal community leadership committees are also formed, working with ELA staff to ensure smooth operations.

Rudo Kayombo, Regional Director of Africa for BRAC International, pointed out how the findings through field research and the trials were able to be synthesized and focused enough that they could be incorporated into the new program structure, which included paying attention to community members and groups that BRAC did not commonly work with in the past.

“One of the DNAs of BRAC is being able to learn and adapt it quickly,” she said. “…We have now managed to integrate all the lessons into a bigger multicultural program, and some of the key lessons were that they need to support the frontline workers.”

When asked to elaborate, Kayombo added that BRAC would provide technical training and the infrastructure to help monitor and use digital technology. “[Frontline workers] are the heart of delivering the value of the ELA program and all its components.”

Another significant change to the rollout of the new ELA program was the introduction of sexual and reproductive health programs targeted at adolescent boys. Boys were included in the program partly to fill a gap in youth-empowerment programs that had thus far been only directed at adolescent girls and women. Through a series of RCTs conducted in 50 rural communities, trial programs similar to ELA were conducted with boys and young men, targeting them specifically.

“[There was] the need to also incorporate adolescent boys and young men, because that formalizes our commitment to getting community buy-in,” said Kayombo.

Manisha Shah, a professor of public policy at UCLA who worked with BRAC to conduct the randomized trials, elaborated that the rationale was to include boys since they were already involved in the decisions and issues that girls and women had to contend with when it came to their health.

“Unless we get these boys on board with the agenda, it’s going to be really hard to think about how we improve the outcomes related to female sexual reproductive health,” she said.

A follow-up survey conducted in those communities two years after the trial programs ended revealed a decrease in intimate partner violence between 20 percent and 60 percent, with a “significant change in these boys’ attitude around violence” and an overall more positive reception and understanding of sexual and reproductive health.

“This just proves that we also need to be targeting the other side of the coin, which is the boys and the young men,” Shah said.

The event also showcased how other organizations partnered with BRAC through the ELA program, such as other NGOs like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Foundation’s deputy director for women’s empowerment Diva Dhar remarked that it was critical to recognize that adolescents deal with “really important transitions from school to work, to marriage, to financial, economic independence, to employment.”

“[Adolescents] are a very important age group… because that attitudes and norms crystallize at this age and can have long-term implications, including for future generations,” Dhar said.

When looking at women’s economic empowerment, Dhar stated that further causal evidence would be needed to explore the intersections between economic independence and family planning and health outcomes.

For the Gates Foundation, this has involved investing in programs that build up skills and training for girls and women, including non-traditional opportunities that will build empowerment.

The ELA program in Africa is a testament to BRAC’s success as an NGO, given its ability to inspire similarly multifaceted youth-empowerment programs and its model to evolve and improve their work. However, the report makes it clear that this is achievable through the continued support from partners and donors and from fostering community engagement. Only then can the communities’ women and girls be empowered through the knowledge and skills they obtain through the program.

“One of the key findings we are taking from this is that the role of mentors and community assistance are so important,” Kayombo said. “We are creating room for them to engage from an empowered perspective, and building their own agency, to give room for them to engage and build themselves up before they can empower others in the community.”

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Elvie Gallo's thriving chicken business means she can support her family and put aside savings to build resilience against future shocks. Credit: BRAC/Robert Irven 2022

By Joyce Chimbi
Iloilo, Philippines, Sep 1 2022 (IPS)

Elvie Gallo no longer hangs around her local grocery store, hoping for the odd job to put food on the table. Her hand-to-mouth life has been replaced by a viable chicken rearing and selling business in Iloilo province in the Philippines.

“I have enough for today, and I am saving for my children’s future,” she says. Gallo’s story of growth and transformation is replicated across 3,000 households in Iloilo, Bukidnon, and Sultan Kudarat, three of the poorest provinces in the country.

These households have been reached through the Padayon Sustainable Livelihood program (Padayon SLP). This is a capability-building program for households and communities living in extreme poverty to improve their socio-economic conditions and develop thriving livelihoods. The Padayon SLP program is overseen by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and supported by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative (UPGI), and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

This project builds on two existing government programs, the Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP) and the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), with additional interventions providing access to available government services and resources to households, coupled with supportive coaching and mentorship as well as robust monitoring of household outcomes. This more holistic approach to poverty reduction is often referred to as Graduation, a multifaceted set of interventions designed to address various factors keeping people trapped in extreme poverty within the local context.

Before this most recent program, the government began exploring how to build on their existing cash transfer and livelihood programs to address multidimensional poverty, diversify household income sources, and build resilience to shocks.

Integration of the Graduation approach into the government’s existing cash transfer program was led by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) via a Graduation pilot officially launched in 2018. The pilot worked with 1,800 extremely poor beneficiaries of the 4Ps cash transfer program and administrative systems established for their Kabuhayan (livelihood) program, which provides households with productive assets and technical training.

The program included other Graduation elements to make the interventions comprehensive such as technical training on managing assets, savings mechanisms, coaching by Graduation Community Facilitators, skills building on social and health issues, and linkages to community groups and cooperatives.

Corazon Gaylon, a participant of the initial pilot, is comfortably putting her children through school and is no longer in debt. Credit: BRAC 2020

Corazon Gaylon, a participant of the initial pilot, reflected on how much her life has changed in just two years after successfully “graduating” from the program.

“My eldest daughter has been able to finish her college program, my second child is now starting his first year, and my youngest child is fully enrolled in school. I am no longer in debt [to anyone]. Our training sessions helped me a lot during the [COVID-19] lockdowns; I was able to prepare for it and put money aside.”

According to an initial endline impact assessment reported by ADB, despite the many challenges created by COVID-19 and ensuing lockdowns, participants demonstrated more resilient livelihoods and better savings and financial management. 73% of group livelihoods and 60% of individual livelihoods remained fully operational by the end of the program. Likewise, despite some initial dips in savings and new loans taken, by September 2020, 69% of those who reported incurring a debt also reported being able to repay all or part of the loan, indicating improved savings management and a significant decrease in instances of risky financial behavior.

After successfully completing the DOLE Graduation project in Negros Occidental, the government is now on its second iteration of Graduation integration via the DSWD program.

Rhea B Peñaflor, DSWD Assistant Secretary, hopes to see the Padayon SLP program scaled up to become a central part of the 4Ps scheme. This will ensure that people participating in the social protection program will not fall back into extreme poverty.

By integrating these various components, Peñaflor has witnessed drastic changes in the participants. “From livelihood support to social empowerment via coaching, our dreams for these participants are being realized, and they are able to create a more stable and successful future for themselves and their families.”

She stresses that the most significant feature of the Padayon SLP program “is the intensive coaching and monitoring aspects that are mainly facilitated through the coaches. We are also seeing great commitment from the various LGUs (Local Government Units) to oversee the implementation and help participants sustain their livelihoods and progress”.

“Our vision, in particular, is to create self-sufficiency and support the entire household. Extreme poverty should be everyone’s business. All levels of government, top-down and bottom-up, should be involved,” Peñaflor continues.

Every day, you can find Rosalie at the fish market near the docks of Iloilo City, providing customers with quality, freshly caught seafood at a fair price. Credit: BRAC/Robert Irven 2022

Marlowe Popes, Program Manager at BRAC UPGI, says: “The future starts at the local level. We must strengthen the capacity of local government units. They have the most experience working within the local contexts and implementing projects. They have experienced the roadblocks and challenges firsthand and are the real experts.”

Additionally, Popes confirms the need to engage local communities in the adaptation and design, implementation, and measurement of Graduation programs. Emphasizing that monitoring processes are significantly boosted by the participation of the local communities, community members serve as a driver for the success and motivation of the participants.

This level of involvement improves accountability, integration, and community ownership, especially during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our strategy to involve leadership was key to success. Regular updates helped bring them into the fold, allowing them to feel part of success,” Popes concludes.

Meanwhile, Gallo and all other 2,699 targeted households continue their journey of growth and transformation, developing livelihoods of their choice, including agriculture, water buffalo, pig rearing and swine fattening, food carts ventures, convenience stores locally known as ‘sari sari’ stores.

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BRAC celebrates 50 years and has reached over nine million people living in extreme poverty through its Ultra-Poor Graduation program, which introduces a set of sequenced and holistic interventions intended to guarantee sustained financial stability. Credit: BRAC

By Naureen Hossain
New York, Jul 13 2022 (IPS)

As part of the 2022 United Nations High-Level Political Forum, BRAC, with the Permanent Mission of Bangladesh to the United Nations, and the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Rwanda to the United Nations, hosted a side event this week to discuss development opportunities led by the Global South. The event highlighted the NGO’s achievements over the last five decades in alleviating and eradicating poverty and the interconnectedness between the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in their initiatives.

The discussion was moderated by IPS Senior Vice Chair and Executive Director, IPS North America, Farhana Haque Rahman. Speakers included BRAC Executive Director Asif Saleh, Ambassador Rabab Fatima of Bangladesh; Robert Kayinamura, Deputy Permanent Representative of Rwanda Mission to the United Nations; Deputy Chief and Senior Programme Management Officer to the UN Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries, and Small Island States (UN-OHRLLS) Susanna Wolf; Oriana Bandiera, Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, and Jaideep Prabhu, Director of the Center for India & Global Business, Cambridge University.

At the high-level discussion commemorating BRAC’s 50 years of eradicating poverty were BRAC Executive Director Asif Saleh; Ambassador Rabab Fatima of Bangladesh and Robert Kayinamura, Deputy Permanent Representative of Rwanda Mission to the United Nations. Credit: BRAC

The event was a commemoration of BRAC’s 50th anniversary. Founded in 1972 by Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, BRAC began as a humanitarian relief provider after Bangladesh’s war of independence ended in 1971. The NGO has since grown in scale and operations, the only one of its size to originate from the Global South. Its programs reach over 100 million people in 11 South Asia and African countries. It aims to provide the tools and strategies for people to graduate from poverty and into more financially stable, resilient lives. Over the last five decades, BRAC has worked to address the pressing socio-economic issues of the times through holistic, solutions-based approaches that have relied on local community involvement in multiple program planning and implementation avenues.

The success of BRAC and other NGOs has also come down to the close collaboration between them and the Bangladesh government. Bangladesh has been celebrated for its economic growth and development, achieving the highest GDP globally from 2010 to 2020. The World Bank has called it a “model for poverty reduction”. This has been possible, as Ambassador Rabab Fatima stated in her opening remarks, because of the government’s “tremendous commitment to achieving the UN SDGs, especially SDG 1: No Poverty – aligning national plans and policy documents with SDG targets and goals and working in close partnership with the NGO sector and other civil society members, including BRAC”.

The forum’s discussion also deliberated on the multi-faceted approach needed for poverty eradication.

BRAC Executive Director Asif Saleh noted that “critical to eradicating poverty is understanding that it is multidimensional.”

“Solutions must address not only income and livelihoods but also education, health, climate, and gender equality – the many interconnected drivers that trap people in the most extreme states of poverty, unable to escape without receiving a significant transfer of assets and tailored support…”

Saleh also remarked that BRAC’s social development and investment approach had been shaped by a “problems-driven approach, rather than a proposal-driven one” and is crucially defined by its founding and establishment in the Global South. The traditional approach to development, as designed and dictated by the Global North, has had the unintended consequence of excluding millions of people from traditional programs and market-led initiatives.

“What we’ve seen is that people in extreme poverty are being left behind in development discussions.”

Deputy Chief and Senior Programme Management Officer to UN-OHRLLS Susanna Wolf; Oriana Bandiera, Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and Jaideep Prabhu, Director of the Center for India & Global Business, Cambridge University. Credit: BRAC

The high-level forum also covered how BRAC’s work and, in turn, Bangladesh’s growth and success demonstrate the SDGs’ interconnectedness, particularly regarding SDG1. Most notably, SDGs 4, 5, and 17 call for equitable and inclusive quality education for all, gender equality and revitalizing global partnerships for sustainable development.

In working with millions of people living in extreme poverty, the solutions put forward by BRAC have been borne from innovation through frugality for the sake of financial viability and social and environmental impact, as Professor Jaideep Prabhu noted.

“Indeed, Bangladesh has pioneered the idea of social business… but instead of returning these profits to investors and owners, you put this wealth back into scaling your social mission and broadening your social impact.”

Prabhu also noted that this approach to business and social development had been adopted worldwide, including publicly listed companies that take responsibility for their performance’s social and environmental impact.

BRAC reached over nine million people living in extreme poverty through its Ultra-Poor Graduation program, which introduces a set of sequenced and holistic interventions intended to guarantee sustained financial stability.

Among their efforts at poverty eradication, a key factor has been to empower women through education and economic independence.

Oriana Bandiera of the London School of Economics remarked: “It is not possible to achieve SDG1 [No Poverty] without advancing economic opportunities for women and their status in society.”

Studies from the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) have shown that investing in women’s economic empowerment can have a meaningful impact on social and economic development. This can be observed in Bangladesh, where it has made significant strides in reducing gender divisions, closing 72 percent of the overall gender gap, and reducing the rates of child marriages, maternal mortality, and family violence.

As was discussed in the forum, this investment in women’s economic empowerment and the long-term impact on poverty eradication can be achieved through community engagement. This has been seen in BRAC’s education programs, first pioneered in 1985. Their model for community-based education programs recruits women, men, and other members of local communities in the most vulnerable areas to provide accessible schooling for boys and girls in one-classroom settings. Today, BRAC has become one of the world’s largest education providers.

Poverty is multidimensional and solutions should not only address income and livelihoods but also education, health, climate, and gender equality, a high-level discussion moderated by IPS Senior Vice Chair and Executive Director, IPS North America, Farhana Haque Rahman heard. Credit: BRAC

BRAC demonstrated the potential for countries in the Global South to proactively lead development initiatives in the region. Deputy Permanent Representative of the Republic of Rwanda to the UN Robert Kayinamura stated that middle-income countries should step up to corroborate and share their knowledge and lived experiences in shaping these initiatives, citing Rwanda’s growth in the development sector.

“We have tried to achieve within our means with the SDGs,” he said. “It has been partnerships, including BRAC, which has brought us to where we are.”

This sentiment and call for partnerships to achieve the SDGs was echoed by Susanna Wolf of UN-OHLLRS, who provided the perspective of international agencies.

“Strong emphasis on building resilience to various shocks from health emergencies to disasters and price shocks, which are all increasingly frequent and disproportionally affect LDCs (Least Developed Countries). To address the multidimensional nature of poverty, all partners are expected to step up their efforts. Social protection has an increasingly important role to play, and other LDCs can learn a lot from the innovative approaches spearheaded by BRAC.”

The systemic inequities that have resulted in and perpetuated extreme poverty have only come in sharper contrast in the wake of compounding global crises such as climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. The efforts of NGOs like BRAC and the frontline workers that continue to work through these crises to support the most vulnerable communities show their resilience. BRAC has championed people’s resilience, agency, and partnership for fifty years; may it continue for another fifty more.

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Lawrence Akena had never dreamt of owning a cow. BRAC believes ownership of assets like livestock can get people out of extreme poverty. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
Oyam & Gulu, Uganda , Jun 14 2022 (IPS)

Lawrence Akena was born 32 years ago with microcephaly. Because of his neurological condition, he didn’t go to school or benefit from skills training.

The exclusion meant Akena survived on handouts and was one of the young persons living in extreme poverty in Kamdini sub-county, Uganda.

“He would leave home early morning for Kamdini corner just to loiter in the township. At times he would spend nights there until I picked him (up and brought him) back,” says Akena’s mother, Lili Iram.

Akena’s condition, microcephaly, affects children born with a small head or a head that stops growing after birth. It can result in epilepsy, cerebral palsy, learning disabilities, hearing loss and vision problems.

The 76-year-old mother says things have changed now. BRAC, the largest NGO in the Global South, selected him among persons with disabilities to benefit from Disability Inclusive Graduation (DIG) project.

BRAC Uganda, the National Union of Women with Disabilities of Uganda (NUWODU), and Humanity & Inclusion (HI, formerly Handicap International) have implemented DIG in selected districts in once war-torn Northern Uganda since 2018. UK Aid has funded DIG through the Inclusive Futures initiative, Cartier Philanthropy and Medicor Foundation, and Sight Savers.

DIG is designed to ensure that Graduation’s four key elements, including meeting people’s basic needs, providing training and assets for income generation, financial literacy and savings support, and social empowerment, are adapted to ensure inclusion for persons with disabilities.

BRAC supported Akena with primary livelihood assets like goats, cattle, pigs, and cash for petty trade. Humanity & Inclusion and NUWODU ensured that DIG’s services, including coaching, were effectively designed to support people with disabilities.

Ownership and control mean that people with disabilities, like Akena, can create a pathway out of extreme poverty and become socially included.

“DIG has helped us a lot. We did not own a cow. We didn’t have goats and chickens. Akena is (now) always at home looking after them,” Iran says when asked about how the program affected her son.

As Iran describes her son’s transformation, Akena enters the loading shed to set his goats free so they can graze alongside two brown zebu cows. According to Iram, he suffered a major setback when his pigs died of African Swine Fever last year.

But when IPS visited Iceme village, where he lives with his mother, Akena had bought another pig which now lives in the pigsty he constructed.

BRAC Project Assistant, Derick Baguma visits Lawrence Akena and his mother, Lili Iram, to assist with their farming ventures. Credit: BRAC

By owning the household assets like cows, goats, and chickens, Akena is graduating from the extremely poor,” says Derick Baguma, a Project Assistant with BRAC.

Baguma has provided household-based coaching to persons with disabilities in Iceme and other villages in Oyam’s Kamdini sub-county to record their assets.

Asked by IPS whether he had witnessed any changes, he said the difference was visible.

“This is not how this household was. And the way Akena appears now is not the same as he was. Do you see those shelters for goats and pigs? Lawrence Akena made over 80% of the contribution to ensure they are the way they are,” Baguma says. “And yet this is a person who was spending nights at verandas in Kamdini.”

Iram told IPS that she is working hard to ensure the assets multiply so that she can invest for her son’s future survival. She and her son are regular savers in their Village Saving Loan Association (VSLA), an informal, local financial institution that relies on its members’ savings to provide loans for emergencies and to support members’ enterprises.

“I had always wished to do something for my son, but I had no support. I plan to buy a piece (of land) and plant trees for his future from the savings in our village saving box,” she says.

Asked what lessons there were to learn from the DIG model, Baguma, who lives with Down syndrome, said there was a need for extra support for households with persons with disabilities.

“That when you are designing a project, you should include persons with disabilities. And it is possible. We shouldn’t look at the expenses. At times people say it is expensive. But we should look at the end results. How impactful is it going to be? If you don’t bring in that perspective of disability, then you are not reaching every person,” he said.

Uganda’s Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development 2020 study found that households with a person with a disability spent close to 39 percent more than other households.

“Future interventions to address poverty and wellbeing needs to ensure that the gap does not widen, leaving people with disabilities and their families behind. This may, therefore, necessitate the provision of additional resources to those households,” said the report.

Finding innovative solutions allows people living with a disability to support themselves and their families. Credit: BRAC

DIG has also provided rehabilitation, psychosocial support (PSS) needs and assistive devices for persons with disabilities, such as railings for entryways, modified latrines and artificial limbs.

One of such recipients is Denis Aboke, who lives in the village next to Akuna’s. Aboke, a cancer survivor, says that he now has an artificial limb 18 years after losing his leg to cancer.

He told IPS that without DIG’s intervention, he would still be using wooden crutches.

“Amputation from cancer had rendered me completely useless. I could not go into the garden. Now I can do some farming. I’m now able to support my family. The children are going to school,” he says.

Apart from the primary assets,  Aboke also received a diesel-powered grain milling machine as part of the DIG program, earning him extra income from fellow villagers. While Aboke sees a brighter future for himself, he hopes to see organisations continue to support people with disabilities.

“My brother, I can tell you that nobody cares about people with disabilities. Landmines disabled many people, but there was no support. Health centres here have nothing to offer,” shares Aboke.

Rwot Ma Miyo Village Savings Loan Association members meeting. BRAC ensures that meetings take place at residences of persons with disabilities, so they can be included. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

Aboke’s rehabilitation was performed at Gulu Regional Referral Hospital, over 65 kilometres from his village. The hospital’s orthopaedic workshop serves clients from Northern Uganda and South Sudan.

Principle Orthopaedic Technologist Senvume Kavuma Abbey told IPS that the workshop is overwhelmed by demand, yet orthopaedic care services are least funded in Uganda.

“The government last supplied us with materials ten years ago. So, if DIG had not come in, we wouldn’t be able to provide services to those who benefitted,” explains Senvume.

Program staff arranged community outreach visits linking orthopaedic services with people with different forms of disabilities.

“We were able to see where those people were coming from, and so we designed appliances customised to their environment and their nature of work, and what they desire to do,” said Senvume

While the DIG model is relatively new to Uganda, the program partners think it can be adopted elsewhere as a tool for improving livelihoods for people with disabilities.

Shammah Arinaitwe, a Technical Specialist with BRAC Uganda, told IPS that Graduation is good for reaching poor households. She explained that it considers the recipient’s needs and what they can do and uses their experience to forge the path out of poverty.

“I will give an example. If you cannot afford 60-70 cents of a dollar per day, the project gives you a boost,” explains Arinaitwe. The comparison of someone who has benefitted from DIG is that the assets gained through their participation in the project mean they end up being able to support themselves and grow.

“If I have one cow, eleven goats, and thirty chickens, you can’t compare me with someone who does not have any,” explains Arinaitwe. “I’m glad to tell you that the same model of the project is being started in Tanzania, drawing from the lessons from Uganda.”

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Women are empowered to take on roles formerly played by men after going through BRAC’s Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative (UPGI) in Egypt. Credit: Bobby Irven/BRAC

By Hisham Allam
CAIRO, Mar 24 2022 (IPS)

When Suhier Abed’s husband broke both legs after falling two floors while working in construction, the 32-year-old mother of five needed to support her family.

She joined the Bab Amal Graduation program hoping that she would replace the $100 her husband earned a month.

“I started my project with two sheep in the hopes of bettering my living situation, especially given my husband’s medical conditions. Indeed, I was successful in developing it, and within a year, the number of sheep had increased to five,” Abed told IPS.

Abed and her husband’s siblings share one house with three rooms. Each family lives in a room with two beds in the village of Al-Shamiya, Assiut Governorate, 440 km from Cairo.

The village between the Nile’s east bank and the desert is a typical upper Egyptian town, with high school dropout rates, unemployment, and high poverty levels.

BRAC’s Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative (UPGI) works to help people lift themselves out of extreme poverty worldwide through the Graduation approach — a holistic, sequenced set of interventions developed 20 years ago designed to reach the most vulnerable people. Egypt is one area where BRAC UPGI is working, providing technical assistance on a Graduation program focused on empowering rural households in extreme poverty.

People living in extreme poverty in Egypt face significant challenges due to rising food prices, currency devaluation, and a lack of sustainable employment opportunities in a country where 32.5 percent of the population lives below the national poverty line.

In Upper Egypt, BRAC UPGI partnered with the Sawiris Foundation for Social Development (SFSD), Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), Egyptian Human Development Association (EHDA), and Giving Without Limits Association (GWLA) to launch the Bab Amal Graduation program, which works to develop sustainable livelihoods and socioeconomic resilience for the 2,400 participating households.

According to the World Bank’s household survey results for October 2019-March 2020, around 30% of the population lived below the national poverty line before the pandemic coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.

COVID-19 is likely to have contributed to an increase in the poverty rate.

“During COVID, BRAC UPGI and its partners had to swiftly adapt their approach to meet participants’ evolving needs — like connecting participants to available public services,” Bobby Irven, Communications Manager for BRAC UPGI, told IPS.

The Bab Amal program started in late 2018 in the two poorest governorates of Egypt: Assiut and Sohag.

“As with any of our Graduation Programs, coaches and field staff are tasked with providing skills training in finance and savings, livelihood development, and ongoing coaching on health, nutrition, education, and more, to help participants carve a pathway out of extreme poverty — helping them meet their most basic needs and beyond,” Irven says.

“To ensure that participants, their families, and even entire communities can weather the storm and move onward and upward from this global crisis, program staff and coaches have put a renewed focus on ensuring that eligible program participants are connected to basic services like health clinics, schools, sanitation facilities, government social protection programs, identification cards and so on.”

BRAC UPGI is committed to combating global extreme poverty, which has increased due to the pandemic in the last two years.

“We believe that to eradicate extreme poverty, which is about so much more than a lack of income, we must invest more heavily in multifaceted approaches that address various challenges people in extreme poverty tend to face – including a lack of food, clean drinking water, regular income, savings and more. Evidence shows that BRAC’s holistic Graduation approach can enable those furthest behind to create a pathway out of the poverty trap,” Irven says.

Abed explains how her small investments grew with the help of this project.

“Following my success with the sheep fattening project, I embarked on my second personal project, handcrafting homemade household detergents and selling them to the women of my village,” Abed says.

Her husband began to recover and obtained a loan to purchase a motorcycle to help with household expenses. Her profits helped him repay a portion of the loan she took out as part of the program.

Women learn various skills including in finance and savings, livelihood development, and ongoing coaching on health, nutrition, education, and more. Through the BRAC UPGI programme women are able to lift themselves and their families out of extreme poverty. Credit: Bobby Irven/BRAC

Suhier aspires to buy a machine that produces household detergents to reduce manual labour and increase production. She also aspires to provide her five children with a good education, which she did not receive.

Another beneficiary, Ibtisam’s situation, was not much better. She began her project with three pregnant sheep in addition to the fodder. Only one sheep gave birth, and the lambs ended up dead in a few weeks, and it appeared that the project would collapse.

“Within a year, my capital declined from $700 to $500, and with the advice of my coach, I decided to sell the sheep and buy a small cow,” Ibtisam told IPS.

Before the program, she did not possess the skills or knowledge to save, especially since her husband did not bring in a steady income. “The coaches teach us to save, a culture we were completely unaware of at the time, but it has become critical in our lives, assisting us in managing our expenses and providing future savings for our children,” Ibtisam says.

Safaa Khalaf is one of the program facilitators who serves 64 families in Shamiya village, where Ibtisam and her family live.

“Once a month, I visit each family and conduct a savings session, as well as follow-up and recording of each woman’s savings and expenses. The second session concentrates on one of the life skills or topics that are important to them, such as female circumcision, early marriage, and family planning,” Safaa told IPS.

Coaches also play a critical role in building connections to financial services and savings for participants. The participants in Graduation programs are often under the assumption that, given their financial status, or lack thereof, they are ineligible to access formal, public financial services like bank accounts or loans, but it is a lack of financial literacy that is the actual roadblock.

“We assist these women in identifying the right project for them and providing the necessary information, training, and tools, such as sewing, handicrafts, and sheep fattening. We also assist their children who have dropped out of school in re-enrolling, paying for school expenses, and navigating government procedures,” Safaa says.

In the village of Al-Shamiya, dozens of successful female role models rebelled against their inherited poverty and neglect and began to turn difficult circumstances into successes. Innovation, like turning a tiny portion of their homes into a grocery store or repurposing a corner as a sewing or handicraft facility, means they can support their families and give their children the education they deserve.

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In the remote Mohonpur village, home to just 140 families, children are benefitting from a free preschool founded by a development NGO that promotes early childhood education in rural Bangladesh. Credit: Mahmuddun Rashed Manik/IPS

By Naimul Haq
JAMALPUR, Bangladesh, Feb 4 2015 (IPS)

Shanta* is only four years old, but already she loves school. Every morning, her mother walks her to the small pre-primary facility in Mohonpur village, about 140 km away from Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka, and leaves her in the care of a young female teacher, who oversees the day’s activities: storytelling, drama, reciting poetry.

The little girl’s mother, Mosammet Laily Begum, is a housewife of humble means. She and her husband, a rickshaw puller who earns about 100 dollars each month carting passengers back and forth, live in a thatched-roof home. They grow vegetables in the garden to supplement their income, and between them only just manage to scrape together the funds to feed and clothe their three kids.

Bangladesh has made huge strides in improving education in the last two decades. It currently has one of the largest primary schooling systems in the world, with an estimated 20 million pupils between the ages of six and 10 years old, along with some 365,000 teachers working in over 82,000 schools.
Education is a luxury, one that – in a different time and place – they would have had to forego in favour of life’s necessities.

But the preschool located close to their home is free. Before Shanta, Laily’s two older children also passed through these classrooms, where they learned the alphabet in both English and Bangla. They have gone on to do very well in elementary school. She credits their love of lessons to the foundation they received here in Mohonpur.

“My daughter now plays with nothing but her school books at home,” Laily tells IPS. “She would rather do that than play with other children in the neighbourhood.”

This family is lucky; unlike scores of others across rural Bangladesh who have no access to preschool facilities, they live within walking distance of one of the several thousand schools run by BRAC, one of the world’s largest development organisations that focuses on early education for kids between the ages of three and five.

Laily knows that her children could easily have fallen into the same category as the 3.3 million ‘out-of-school’ youth in Bangladesh. Until 2012, the government offered no options for families like hers, that couldn’t afford private preschooling.

This meant that the roughly 45 million Bangladeshis who subsist on less than 1.25 dollars a day had little chance of preparing their offspring for mainstream education.

This fueled a vicious cycle: poorer children who couldn’t get a head start lagged behind their more privileged peers, with inequities continuing on into the secondary and tertiary levels.

Many of these disadvantaged youth make up the bulk of Bangladesh’s unemployed, who constitute some 4.5 percent of the population of 156 million people.

Organisations like BRAC have attempted to level this uneven playing field.

With 12,450 pre-primary schools across the country, which provide schooling for nearly 360,000 students each year, the BRAC (Pre-Primary) Education Programme (BEP) is the largest free preschool programme in the country.

Altogether, over 5.2 million kids have benefited from these facilities since BRAC first rolled out the initiative in 1997.

Easing the transition into mainstream schooling

Standing inside the small tin shed that serves as her classroom, 27-year-old Rowshanara Begum is in her element. She handles a group of 30 kids, 18 of them girls – a 50-percent female enrolment rate being a top priority for BRAC – and she knows she is making a difference.

For two-and-a-half hours a day, six days a week, she painstakingly takes her charges through the alphabet, peppering the tedious process with drawings, nursery rhyme recitals and games. The flexible, informal structure keeps families coming back for more.

“There is tremendous pressure from parents to open another such free school for the children here in Mohonpur village,” she tells IPS.

Poor families can seldom afford the cost of private preschooling. They rely on free education provided by NGOs like BRAC to give their children a leg-up in life. Credit: Mahmuddun Rashed Manik/IPS

Teachers are trained to nurture a child’s creativity, which in turn encourages better communication, language and social skills. Equal emphasis is placed on improving motor ability, using exercises such as free-hand drawing and painting.

In short, the whole curriculum is geared towards easing the transition into the public education system.

This is no small undertaking in a country where the average child takes 8.6 years to complete the five-year primary school cycle. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) chalks this up to low standards in public institutions, and the fact that 24 percent of all teachers in government-run or registered non-government schools are untrained.

The NGO has a lot to show for its efforts. A senior BRAC official who did not wish to be named stated that they have achieved a “remarkable” transfer rate of students from preschool into primary school, touching 99.14 percent.

Still, this is only half the battle won.

Bangladesh has made huge strides in improving education in the last two decades. It currently has one of the largest primary schooling systems in the world, with an estimated 20 million pupils between the ages of six and 10 years old, along with some 365,000 teachers working in over 82,000 schools.

Since 1990, it has raised its enrolment rate from 72 to 97 percent and its completion rate from 40 to 79 percent. The number of primary schools receiving free textbooks has increased from 32 percent in 2010 to over 90 percent in 2014.

According to Rasheda K Choudhury, executive director of the Campaign for Popular Education (CAMPE) – a network comprised of over 1,000 NGOs working on education issues – Bangladesh has also lowered the dropout rate from 33 percent just a few years ago to 20 percent in 2014.

“Improved teacher trainings, a narrower gap in the student-teacher ratio [which now averages 49:1, compared to 67:1 in 2005], and provisions for stipends for students are among the reasons for its success,” she told IPS.

But there are gaping holes that need to be filled. Policy makers insist that the current allocation of 2.5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) on the education sector must be upped to at least four percent in order to truly provide high-quality education for all.

Much work also needs to be done to improve access for the 71 percent of the population living in rural areas, as well as for indigenous communities who dwell in the country’s remote hill districts and residents of ‘chars’ – little islands formed from sedimentation that dot the country’s largest rivers.

According to Johannes Zutt, the World Bank’s country director for Bangladesh, the government is reaching out to those left behind by educational reform, “including slum dwellers, working children, indigenous children and children with disabilities.”

But unless programmes’s like BRAC’s BEP are rolled out on a massive scale all around the country, Bangladesh will continue to nurse a patchy educational track record, and the goal of universal primary education will remain out of reach.

*Not her real name

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida