BRAC

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BRAC, the largest international development organization in the world, works to empower the poor to improve their own lives through economic, social, and legal programs that unleash human potential and address the many dimensions of poverty.

Why We Invested

Since its founding in Bangladesh in 1972, BRAC has established itself as a pioneer in tackling the underlying causes of poverty to enable sustainable poverty reduction. BRAC gives people the tools to fight poverty across all fronts, offering services in the areas of economic empowerment, enterprise development, livelihood training, education and health, and human rights and legal services. Omidyar Network supports BRAC’s work across a range of core programs in economic development and legal services.

BRAC’s economic development program supports job creation, economic entrepreneurship, and access to resources and income-generating activities to help poor rural women develop skills and tap opportunities to improve their lives. Through its microfinance initiative, BRAC has created hundreds of thousands of local associations through which it provides group-based microloans for poor women as well as microenterprise loans for individual men and women.

BRAC’s Human Rights and Legal Aid Services (HRLS) program provides legal education, legal aid, and support services that promote the legal empowerment of the poor. With Omidyar Network’s support, BRAC is expanding the program to address property rights by helping individuals and communities understand their legal entitlements to property, formalize their rights, and leverage their assets to invest in the future. The program aims to develop scalable frameworks to defend property rights and combat poverty on a global scale.

Impact
  • BRAC reaches more than 110 million people with development interventions in Asia and Africa.
  • In Bangladesh alone, BRAC works to combat poverty in 70,000 villages and 2000 slums, and reaches three quarters of the entire population with an integrated package of poverty-alleviation services.
  • BRAC employs more than 100,000 people, the majority of which are women.
  • BRAC provides microfinance services to more than 8 million poor and disadvantaged people.