BRAC

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BRAC is an international development organization that aims to alleviate poverty and empower individuals by addressing the many different economic and social dimensions of poverty.

Why We Invested

Since its founding in Bangladesh in the early 1970s, BRAC has pioneered the strategy of tackling the varied dimensions of poverty to enable long-term, sustainable poverty reduction. Central to BRAC’s strategy is its core program in economic development, which creates new financial opportunities through job creation, support of economic entrepreneurship, and increased access to resources for the poor.

BRAC’s economic development program focuses on helping poor rural women develop new skills and tap opportunities to improve their lives and become self-reliant. The program’s elements include microfinance, institution building, income generating activities and support for new enterprises. As part of its microfinance program, BRAC has created hundreds of thousands of local associations for the poor called Village Organizations (VOs). Through these associations, BRAC provides group-based microloans for women as well as microenterprise loans for individual men and women.

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.