Read the latest from BRAC and its partners
3/30/2021
Report from the Field: A Conversation with Marlowe Popes, Field Manager, Philippines
When Marlowe Popes joined the Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative in 2017 as BRAC Field Manager for the DOLE Graduation pilot, he never imagined he’d be guiding his team and…
3/30/2021
One Year Later: Pivoting Poverty Alleviation Programming During COVID
March 2021 is a time to reflect. One year ago this month, the world as we know it changed. Fundamental patterns of life taken for granted were suddenly removed from the fabric of our collective realities…
3/30/2021
ADB / UPGI Social Protection for Economic Inclusion: Event Recap
As we pass the year anniversary of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we face the devastating impacts this pandemic has had on the most poor and vulnerable populations around the world…
3/5/2021
Ripples of Change: Investing in Women’s Empowerment
On this International Women’s Day, we face the overwhelming impacts the COVID-19 pandemic has had on progress toward global gender equality. Women have been disproportionately affected…
2/25/2021
Expanding Access to Basic Services in Egypt
Poverty is created by barriers. The barriers that reinforce poverty are multidimensional but often tied to an individual’s inability to access the resources and tools needed to overcome the circumstances that…
2/26/2021
Press Release: BRAC UPGI Partners with Governments in India, the Philippines, and Tunisia
Today, BRAC UPGI announced three new contracts to expand implementation of the Ultra-Poor Graduation approach with governments in Tamil Nadu, India, the Philippines, and Tunisia…
2/11/2021
How an Evidence-Based Program from Bangladesh Could Scale to End Extreme Poverty (Brookings)
Extreme poverty has risen sharply due to the economic turmoil caused by COVID-19. After decades of progress in international development, up to 150 million people now face a return to severe destitution…
1/26/2021
Paving the Path for Adoption of the Graduation Approach by National Governments (Thomson Reuters)
Governments are entrusted by citizens with tremendous responsibilities. They must collect revenues from businesses and households and use them to assure…
1/26/2021
Lessons on Adaptation and Scale from BRAC’s Graduation Program in Bangladesh
Among a rich collection of data and insight from economic inclusion programs around the world, the new PEI State of Economic Inclusion Report 2021 features a case study on BRAC’s Ultra-Poor Graduation program (UPG) in Bangladesh….
12/10/2020
World Bank Partnership for Economic Inclusion (PEI) Launches New Report
The State of Economic Inclusion Report 2021 sheds light on one of the most intractable challenges faced by development policy makers and practitioners: transforming the economic lives of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people…
1/27/2021
Evolving the Graduation Approach in Bangladesh: A Story of Iteration and Adaptation
The launch of the World Bank’s State of Economic Inclusion Report 2021 provides a timely opportunity to reflect on the integral role learning and adaptation has played in…
1/13/2021
The World’s Largest NGO Rethinks Its Future (Devex)
When COVID-19 started spreading, BRAC was able to play a major role in countries like Bangladesh, where it has its roots, and Afghanistan, where it set up COVID-19 screening….
12/10/2020
BRAC UPGI Announced as Vanguard Member of the Million Lives Club
BRAC UPGI has been selected as an official Vanguard member of the Million Lives Club, an initiative that recognizes social innovators scaling to improve the lives of more than one million people living on less than five dollars a day. …
12/4/2020
Paving the Path for Adoption of the Graduation Approach by National Governments
Governments are entrusted by citizens with tremendous responsibilities. They must collect revenues from businesses and households and use them to assure…
12/4/2020
Investing in women and girls: How governments can drive inclusive recovery
Before COVID-19, many countries were making significant gains in human capital, improving health and education outcomes for girls and boys and empowering….
10/29/2020
How Governments Can Reach People in Extreme Poverty and Build Resilient Livelihoods During COVID-19
Let’s begin with the good news: The international community has taken unprecedented measures to respond to the humanitarian crises…
10/28/2020
Driving Systems Change to End Extreme Poverty: Event Recap
How do we ensure people living in extreme poverty get their basic needs met? What are the biggest barriers to creating systems change through governments to end extreme poverty…
10/27/2020
Opinion: The long shadow of COVID-19 on extreme poverty
Today, the world faces a greater challenge than any before as the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to undo years of progress in poverty eradication while exacerbating preexisting inequalities…
10/15/2020
Holistic Solutions for a Growing Food Insecurity Crisis
The public health impact of COVID-19 has been devastating, taking the lives of more than one million people globally. As time passes, the global community is becoming increasingly concerned…
10/15/2020
International Day of the Girl 2020: Unlocking Potential Amidst Crisis
On this International Day of the Girl, girls around the world are in peril. Economic shocks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic are pushing millions into poverty, including 47 million women and girls…
9/28/2020
Meeting the Immediate and Long-Term Needs of the World’s Poorest People During the Pandemic
While COVID’s reach is global, its impact is diversified and disproportionate. For countries with strained resources, fragile health systems, and large populations of people in need…
9/28/2020
A Rights-Based Approach to Post-COVID-19 Economic Recovery
Is access to social protection a human right? In a recent report, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Olivier De Schutter, argues that COVID-19…
9/29/2020
Building Resilience in the Midst of Ensuing Chaos in the Philippines
When Jenalyn Dizon, a mother of five, joined BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative’s DOLE Graduation Pilot in 2018, she was not prepared to overcome the severe disruption and…
9/24/2020
Catalyzing Change: Graduation and the SDGs
With only ten years left to accomplish the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the global community must come together to achieve our 2030 vision by committing…
7/30/2020
Four Ways to Strengthen Economic Recovery in Urban Areas
The estimated one billion people living in slums and informal settlements around the world are particularly vulnerable, as they often live in overcrowded areas where physical distancing is impossible…
7/30/2020
Putting Data First: Designing Social Protection Programs that Work
Recent events have dealt a heavy blow to the past few decades of progress against extreme poverty. A recent brief by…
7/28/2020
Lessons Learned: Responding to a Changing, Complex Poverty Context in Lesotho
Lesotho is unique in many ways, which presents its own set of challenges when creating a national program designed…
7/28/2020
Adapting Programs to Meet the Needs of the World’s Poorest People
Without a solution tailored for the world’s poorest people, we will not be able to eradicate poverty. Nearly 700 million people around the world live in a precarious state of extreme poverty…
7/13/2020
Fighting Extreme Poverty During COVID-19: Two Proven Ways to Build Resilience in Times of Catastrophic Disruption
All across the world, COVID-19 has disrupted everyday life. But while…
6/18/2020
Hope, action, change: Notes from Session 5 of TED2020
Daring, bold, systems-disrupting change requires big dreams and an even bigger vision. For Session 5 of TED2020, the Audacious Project, a collaborative funding initiative housed at TED, highlighted bold plans…
6/23/2020
Looking beyond the lowest-common denominator? DFID/FCO merger
The progress on ending extreme poverty, preventable child deaths, gender equality and climate change was too hard won to be side-lined…
6/19/2020
Using the Graduation approach to uplift refugees in a changing world: An Interview with UNHCR’s Ziad Ayoubi
Exploring how integrating the Graduation approach into social protection…
6/18/2020
BRAC UPGI Receives $60 Million as 2020 Audacious Project to Lift 21 Million People from Extreme Poverty by 2026
Over the next six years, BRAC’s Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative will…
5/27/2020
Lessons Learned: Sustainable Livelihoods For The World’s Poorest Youth Population
When one thinks of Uganda, what images generally come to mind? A resilient nation with the second…
5/21/2020
Kicking Open Doors and Discovering New Possibilities Through Graduation
It was October 17th, 2019, International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. The BRAC head office in Dhaka…
5/15/2020
A Reason to Smile
In a remote town in northern Kenya sits a small shop and hotel where people come to sip tea, buy…
4/27/2020
Bridging the Gap: How BRAC UPGI is Working with Governments
Understanding the challenges the poor face when trying to access basic needs such as health care and…
4/22/2020
Delivering Health Services to the Most Vulnerable During COVID-19
Effective pandemic responses are dependent on strong health systems that rapidly deploy community health teams…
04/22/2020
NYT: This Pandemic Is Bringing Another With It
More suffering is ahead for the developing world…
4/13/2020
Meeting Basic Needs of the World’s Poorest During a Time of Crisis: Part II
Just as our colleagues have done in Bangladesh, most programmes’ activities in other countries have been put on hold…
4/6/2020
Meeting Basic Needs of the World’s Poorest During a Time of Crisis: Part I
Though regular Graduation activities have stopped, UPG staff continue to support participating households by…
03/20/2020
More Measurement, Less Talk
Poverty graduation has been a transformative vehicle in drawing attention to the barriers and opportunities facing extreme…
3/20/2020
Lessons Learned: How to Incorporate a Gender Lens in Graduation Programming/Programs
BRAC ensures a judicious prioritization of women empowerment and incorporates gender…
3/9/2020
Empowering Women to Escape Extreme Poverty
While both women and men are affected by extreme poverty, women have a considerably harder time escaping poverty…
2/25/2020
Lessons Learned: How to Integrate Graduation into Existing Programming
By building on existing cash transfers and public works schemes, Graduation costs can be kept to a minimum while still…
2/25/2020
Understanding the Costs of Graduation, Investing in Long-Term Gains
Graduation is one of the most evidence-based integrated development approaches to date. It’s a proven, comprehensive…
2/21/2020
Designing Graduation for Government Integration and Scale in Egypt
The Bab Amal Program, modeled on the Graduation approach, aims to reduce poverty in rural Upper Egypt by targeting…
1/24/2020
How to Reach Millions Excluded from Expanding Global Marketplace
Over the past few decades, the expansion of the global marketplace has lifted a third of the global population…
11/20/2019
BRAC UPGI recognized at 2019 Paris Peace Forum
The Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative was named a top project, awarded special scale-up support for 2020…
11/07/2019
Changing the culture of economics: The 2019 Nobel laureates
The 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics Sciences was awarded to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer for…
10/22/2019
Standing by those who have the least
My thoughts about poverty had completely changed after meeting Amena. In 2005, while traveling around Bangladesh, I learned…
10/10/2019
What is the ‘graduation approach’?
In years past, traditional poverty alleviation programs have often been unable to target the poorest and sustain long term benefits…
10/14/2019
Celebrating the stories of 2 million women
BRAC’s Ultra-Poor Graduation Programme has now reached more than 2 million households in Bangladesh using an approach that…
10/1/2019
New Brookings book featuring Graduation
BRAC’s UPGI Managing Director Lindsay Coates and Senior Research Scott MacMillan are featured in the Brookings Institute’s new…
8/23/2019
Graduation featured on PBS
A scientific approach to evaluating global anti-poverty programs: In Ethiopia, over a quarter of the population survives on less than two dollars a day…
8/21/2019
Graduation kicks off in Liberia
It was mid-morning on Thursday, August 15, 2019 when Esther Quapoule, a widow in her late 50s received a delegation from BRAC Liberia…
7/18/2019
BRAC at side-event on Refugee Economic Inclusion
On 18th June 2019, UPGI Managing Director Lindsay Coates, represented BRAC at the UNHCR’s 75th Standing Committee meeting in Geneva…
7/9/2019
Poverty Alleviation Coalition website launched
The UNHCR and the Partnership for Economic Inclusion (PEI) has launched its official website, connecting interested parties to its mission as well as the…
6/25/2019
Breaking the Poverty Cycle: Lessons from Graduation Approaches Alleviation
The Breaking the Poverty Cycle event was hosted in Dhaka on June 24 and jointly organized by BRAC, CARE, Save…
6/17/2019
Graduation pilot in Kenya comes to a successful close
In 2014, BRAC, as a technical advisor, designed a program that adopts the Ultra-Poor Graduation to improve the resilience of 2,600 vulnerable women and youth…
6/17/2019
BRAC presents on linking social protection and economic inclusion
With major knowledge gaps identified by the Indonesian government about whether their employment, enterprise and training programs respond to the needs of the nation’s…
6/15/2019
Ultra-Poor Graduation program launched in the Philippines
We are excited to announce that the Philippines Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) has officially launched BRAC’s Graduation pilot project in Negros Occidental…
6/15/2019
Independent DFID review highlights major successes of BRAC’s Graduation program
By creating inclusive and transparent partnerships with government agencies, BRAC is able to leverage its strengths and fill gaps in knowledge and resource areas. While the…
6/7/2019
Naila Kabeer on Why Randomized Controlled Trials need to include Human Agency
OxFam: There’s a buzz abroad in the development community around a new way to tackle extreme poverty. BRAC’s Targeting the Ultra Poor (TUP) programme combines asset…
5/29/2019
NYT: Cash, Food and Health Care All Help the Poor, but Something’s Still Missing
Nicholas Kristof: To battle poverty at home or abroad, we provide cash and food, clean water and medical care — and all of this is important. But a growing body of evidence…
6/16/2019
World Bank: No Household Left Behind: Afghanistan Graduation Impact Evaluation
The share of people living in extreme poverty fell from 36 percent in 1990 to 10 percent in 2015 but has continued to increase in many fragile and conflict-affected areas where…