Alliance of Students Against Poverty

BRAC-Targeting the Ultra Poor

Since BRAC’s modest inception as a small-scale relief rehabilitation project in Bangladesh in 1972, BRAC has grown into one of the world’s largest non-profit organizations with over 40,000 full-time staff and over 160,000 paraprofessionals, 72% of which are women. BRAC is in business to end poverty. It employs a holistic approach to alleviating poverty by integrating its core programs (health, education and microfinance) with strategic linkages and constant evolution. BRAC works with people whose lives are dominated by extreme poverty, illiteracy, disease and other constraints. With multifaceted development interventions, BRAC strives to foster education, create wealth, better health and improve their quality of life.

Fazle Hasan Abed, Founder and Chairperson of Building Resources Across Communities (BRAC) explains the realities of extreme poverty in Bangladesh:

"Over a quarter of Bangladesh’s people live in extreme poverty, not being able to meet even the barest of the basic needs. They spend most of their meager, unreliable earnings on food and yet fail to fulfill the minimum calorie intake needed to stave off malnutrition. They are consequently in frequent poor health causing further drain on their meager resources due to loss of income and health expenses. More often than not, the extreme poor are invisible even in their own communities, living on other peoples’ land, having no one to speak up for them or assist them in ensuring their rights. Extreme poverty also has a clear gendered face – they are mostly women who are dispossessed widows, and abandoned."

Acknowledging this reality, BRAC initiated a program in 2002 called, ‘Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction: Targeting the Ultra Poor’ program. CFPR-TUP is a program designed to create opportunity ladders to help the absolute poorest, or the Ultra Poor, graduate to a mainstream microfinance program through a broad-based and multidimensional attack on poverty. The four major components of TUP are: enterprise development training, asset transfer, social development, and essential health care.

Enterprise Development Training: This component provides training and follow-up services tailored to the specific needs of the ultra poor. Members receive enterprise development training in poultry, livestock, vegetable farming, horticulture, nursery, and non-farm activities.

Special Investment Program for the Ultra poor: This component involves asset transfer and stipend support to the ultra poor. Members receive assets to begin an income generating activity such as poultry rearing, livestock, agriculture, horticulture nursery and non-farm activities. They also receive a monthly subsistence allowance of Tk.300 ( ) as a short time income support.

Social Development Program: This component involves individual and group work with the ultra poor in the program, providing support and counseling on development of their livelihood strategies and in helping to cope with crises.

Health Care Services for the Ultra poor: This component provides specialized health care services and referral arrangements for the ultra poor. Members receive tailor made health services. The health services include social mobilization, health awareness, basic health care, pregnancy related care, family planning, immunization, tuberculosis control, vitamin A capsule distribution among children between the ages of 1 and 5. Members are educated on health related issues during informal weekly discussions.

BRAC is now global, working in six countries outside of Bangladesh: Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda, Southern Sudan and Pakistan. BRAC will continue to innovate and find the most effective ways of reaching the poorest of the poor in the newest countries of its expanding program. Furthermore, BRAC is partnering with other programs to train them how to implement the TUP program. These include: Bandhan in Kolkata, India and Fonkoze in Haiti.

To learn more, go to their website: http://www.brac.net/cfpr.htm