Clinton Global Initiative Commitment

Last year at the Clinton Global Initiative, BRAC made a commitment to raise US$271 million to provide empowering educational opportunities for the most disadvantaged children, especially girls, on a significant scale in Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Southern Sudan. Below, BRAC Founder and chairperson Dr. F. H. Abed gives a video report on the progress we've made so far:

ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT

BRAC has over fifteen years of experience working to address the unique needs of adolescents. Considering the vulnerability and social isolation of adolescent girls, BRAC in Bangladesh started adolescent development initiatives under the BRAC Education Program (BEP) in 1993. Since then, BRAC has developed two key intervention strategies for adolescent development namely the Adolescent Development Program and Employment and Livelihood for Adolescents.

This year, at the Clinton Global Initiative, BRAC will make a commitment in partnership with BRAC USA, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Nike Foundation and the NoVo Foundation to scale up BRAC’s education programs to provide educational opportunities to more of the world’s the poorest children, particularly girls, in developing countries.

Adolescent Development Program

The concept of the Adolescent Development Program (ADP) was developed after BRAC staff noticed that many BRAC primary schools graduates, mainly girls, who could not or were not permitted to continue their studies through conventional tracks, largely due to entrenched social customs of seclusion of women, tended to relapse into ignorance and illiteracy.

BRAC created Adolescent Development Centers, equipped with reading materials, in 1993. These centers were formed to encourage adolescent girls to retain their literacy, math skills and life skills. With the initial success of these centers, the program added on issue-based life-skills training for adolescents using an innovative methodology where emerging adolescents leaders were trained to provide to training to their peers. In 2003, after realizing that many adolescents were involved and/or deeply interested in starting their own businesses, BRAC started offering income generation skills training and microfinance services to the program.

A recent study comparing the members of BRAC’s adolescent development program with the general adolescents in Bangladesh finds impressive gains made by the program members¹.

In terms of aspiration to study, the study finds that 66% of average adolescent boys and 42% of average adolescent girls in Bangladesh would like to study up to University level, while the corresponding figures are 89% for BRAC ADP’s adolescent boys and 68% for BRAC ADP adolescent girls. The study also finds that while only 12% of average adolescent girls reported to be involved in income generating economic activities, at 26% the corresponding figure for BRAC ADP’s adolescent girls is more than double.

As of December 2006, BRAC Bangladesh under its Adolescent Development Program has set up almost 17,000 ADCs organizing close to half a million adolescents throughout the country. Almost 300,000 of these adolescents have formed their own microfinance groups and have taken loans of over US$ 6 million.

As the various components of BRAC’s program for the adolescents evolved over time, the structured linkages among the components were at times not there. For instance, the microfinance component of the program (ELA) was a relatively recent addition and did not confine itself to adolescent members of BRAC’s Adolescent Development Program (ADP). Currently, of almost 300,000 members of ELA, 30% are ADP members.

With Nike Foundation’s support, BRAC has pioneered an innovative model to provide centers for adolescent girls in concert with BRAC’s ELA program, ELA Kendras, which will be tested in Tanzania and Uganda and scaled up if successful. BRAC staff, who are experts in education, will recruit and train new staff in each country, manage and implement the program. Further, BRAC’s track record of working in Muslim-majority countries is an additional advantage in finding culturally appropriate ways to widen opportunities for girls.

Click here to read more about the history of the Adolescent Development Program.

Employment and Livelihood for Adolescents

Employment and Livelihood for Adolescents (ELA) is a program developed for BEP (BRAC Education Program) school graduates that primarily focuses on the financial empowerment of adolescent girls. ELA groups are comprised of 20-40 members and all are girls. Loans disbursed to the ELA members invest the loans primarily in poultry, livestock, nursery, fisheries, and other small businesses.

ELA has been combined with BRAC’s Adolescent Development Program (ADP) to provide adolescents, who do not qualify for services under conventional microfinance programs, with a pathway for economic empowerment and success. While microfinance exists for adults, by and large, microfinance programs are unavailable to young people, especially unmarried ones, perhaps because youth are perceived as a risky group to serve. Currently, there are approximately 300,000 members of ELA, 30% of them ADP members.

In 2005, in partnership with the Nike Foundation, BRAC set up an ELA Center pilot in Bangladesh. A total of 1,500 ELA centers were established to provide ELA members with a space to socialize, read magazines and books and play games. These ELA members are also provided with basic livelihood skills training to help them successfully leverage their microloans. BRAC’s Research and Evaluation Division designed a quasi-experimental design to evaluate the impact of the support provided by Nike Foundation to ELA members.

Due to encouraging preliminary results from the ELA Center pilot in Bangladesh, the Nike Foundation is providing a $900,000 grant to establish a pilot ELA/ADP program for adolescents in Tanzania and Uganda. If the pilot is successful, BRAC will seek resources to scale up the program in both countries in appropriately designed phases. In addition, BRAC has proposed to leverage additional resources to pilot the program in Southern Sudan, expand on the adolescent pilots in BRAC Afghanistan and further scale up its adolescent program in Bangladesh, especially in underserved areas with vulnerable adolescents. The goal of the program is to improve the quality of life of vulnerable adolescents, particularly girls, by helping them organize, create a space of their own, and develop skills that will empower them to live and grow as confident, self-reliant individuals and active agents of social change in their own families and communities.

NOTES:

1: Kabir, MM, R Afroze, M Aldeen, 2007, “Impact assessment of Adolescent Development Program of BRAC: Some preliminary findings”, Education Research Group, BRAC Research and Evaluation Division, mimeo.