by Bobby Irven, Communications Officer | BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative
When researchers and academia look at the impact of gender-focused development interventions, the focus is usually put on economic indicators and market outcomes. What is often overlooked, likely because it is so hard to measure, is the long-term impacts on women’s empowerment and the barriers broken down because of it. While Graduation programs vary in their design, targeting, and length, it has become clear in recent years that this holistic approach to poverty alleviation is highly effective, providing long-term, sustainable impacts to both the female participants of the programs, and their immediate households. …
By Nazia Moqueet, Senior Technical Advisor & Caitlin O’Donnell, Technical Advisor | BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative
Regular coaching and mentorship is one of the cornerstones of BRAC’s Graduation approach. In times of crises, coaching plays an even greater role in ensuring that households living in extreme poverty have the support, guidance, and encouragement they need to succeed.
“Coaching done well may be the most effective intervention designed for human performance.” -Atul Gawande
For those who have had the opportunity to attend school, play a sport, or have a close-knit family, one might not even realise it, but coaching and mentorship is a regular part of generating success in many aspects of daily life. …
By Hana Brixi, Manager of the Human Capital Project at the World Bank and Lindsay Coates, Managing Director for BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative
Before COVID-19, many countries were making significant gains in human capital, improving health and education outcomes for girls and boys and empowering women to reach their potential. Between 2010 and March 2020, the World Bank’s Human Capital Index 2020 Update found an average increase of five percent in the human capital index across countries.
Now, the pandemic and its shocks to market, health, and education systems jeopardize this progress — 25 years of development achievements have begun to unwind in the span of 25 weeks. Economic disruptions have disproportionately harmed those who are already vulnerable, threatening to push an additional 47 million women and girls into extreme poverty. Women are more likely to work in the informal economy, preventing many from accessing crucial social protection programs, especially in low-income countries. …
By Ruth Levine, PhD — CEO | IDinsight
Governments are entrusted by citizens with tremendous responsibilities. They must collect revenues from businesses and households and use them to assure public safety, infrastructure, education, healthcare, and other services that respond to both universal needs and the particular challenges of society’s most vulnerable. Carrying out these responsibilities, which are negotiated through intense political processes, requires governments to overcome bureaucratic structures, strained capacity for implementation, and budgetary limits. …
By Lindsay Coates, BRAC UPGI & John Floretta, J-PAL
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? What does innovation in poverty eradication look like post-COVID? These questions guided the joint BRAC UPGI and J-PAL high-level panel event held on October 20th. …
By Jake Konig, Hilton Fellow, BRAC UPGI
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 about the next crisis: the economic disaster of COVID-19. Lockdowns in low to lower-middle income countries are causing massive shocks to already fragile economies.
According to new data by UN Women and the United Nations Development Programme, COVID-19 threatens to push 47 million more women and girls into poverty by the end of 2020 which could unravel years of progress in working to eradicate poverty and accomplish Sustainable Development Goal 1. In response to this humanitarian catastrophe, governments have enacted an unprecedented number of social protection programs to meet the basic needs of the world’s vulnerable people. The UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Olivier De Schutter, highlighted in a recent report that the existing social protection systems do not hold up to human rights scrutiny, and are maladapted, short-term, reactive, and inattentive to the realities of those living in extreme poverty. …
By Jake Konig, Hilton Fellow, BRAC UPGI
“I was only 14 years old when I got married. I do my best to give my daughter the childhood I never had, I want her to be confident — dream bigger than I ever could.” -Manju, BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation program participant in Bangladesh
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. …
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 devastation that would be brought about by COVID-19. Yet, two years after the pilot started, when the lockdowns and travel restrictions were enforced to prevent further spread of COVID-19, and the survival of her family and neighbours were put at great risk, Jenalyn was able to withstand the shock.
In fact, she was able to increase her income by providing fresh food to her community during grocery lockdowns thanks to the training and support she received as a participant in the DOLE Graduation pilot. …
By Bobby Irven, Communications Officer, BRAC UPGI
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 has exposed that it must be for everyone, including the world’s poorest populations. Only through a human rights lens, which has yet to become widely adopted, can we have sustainable, effective social protection measures that serve the poorest populations. …
By Lindsay Coates, Managing Director of BRAC’s Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative
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, COVID-19 is a humanitarian and economic catastrophe. People living in extreme poverty are the most affected with already-limited access to food, clean water, steady income, and public services — and often are unable to practice social distancing. Lives and livelihoods are both at risk.
BRAC’s Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative (UPGI) applauds the call for additional funding and adjustments to meet the accelerating needs of those most affected. UNDP’s analysis and call for a Temporary Basic Income (TBI) for 2.7 billion of the world’s poorest people enabling them to stay home and prevent further spread of the virus, as well as an increased focus on social protection systems that will help make the poor and near-poor more resilient to economic downturns in the future, is a shift from the usual. We support global actors working toward different solutions to ensure support reaches people living in extreme poverty who are being pushed deeper into poverty during this pandemic. …
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