BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative (UPGI) is working to change how a global community of leaders address extreme poverty — shifting how governments, civil society, and people living in extreme poverty work together to tackle this problem.
In 2020, UPGI received a catalytic investment as a TED 2020 Audacious Project which…
By Rasha Natour | Senior Manager of Advocacy & Max Gollin | Communications Coordinator, Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative
Extreme poverty is often defined as living on less than $1.90 a day, the international poverty line set by the World Bank.
However, poverty is not merely a lack of income. An accurate…
By Caitlin O’Donnell | Technical Advisor & Bobby Irven | Communications Manager, Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative
Poverty is multidimensional. This is undeniable, but as one peels back the layers within this concept, the complexities of poverty, particularly extreme poverty, only deepen. One critical element of this is energy poverty. Defined as…
By Lauren Whitehead |Director of Technical Services, BRAC UPGI & Jake Konig | Content Development Associate, BRAC UPGI
COVID-19 has forced millions more people, largely informal workers who represent 50–80% of employment in many urban centers, into poverty. According to the World Bank’s Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report 2020, those…
By Isabel Whisson | Special Assistant for Strategy, BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative, and Max Gollin | Communication Coordinator, BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative
Our current system has left behind the people it should be serving. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly 700 million people lived in extreme poverty on less than…
By Rasha Natour | Senior Advocacy Manager, BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative
As global poverty rates rise for the first time since 1998, there is an immediate need to prioritize investments in social protection policies and programs that meet the needs of people living in extreme poverty in the near and…
By Jake Konig | Content Development Associate, BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative
“I needed to work but there weren’t any jobs in my village. Sometimes, all we had was just a dried loaf of bread that I used to wet in boiled water and season with salt for my children to…
By Lindsay Coates | Managing Director, BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative
The international community cannot work in silos and expect to end extreme poverty. Poverty is multidimensional.The most effective and powerful interventions that empower people to escape the poverty trap address the lives of people living in poverty holistically. A truly…
By Md. Akram Hosain | Branch Manager, Kazirhat, Satkhira, Ultra-Poor Graduation (UPG) program; Upoma Mahbub | Advocacy Manager, BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Programme; & Elaina Conrad | Associate, Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative
On May 20, 2020, super Cyclone Amphan tore through the coastal regions of southern Bangladesh. Sufia emerged from the safety…
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 almost two thousand project participants through a pandemic.
When one of the world’s longest running lockdowns began in the Philippines due to…
