April 14, 2009

FREEDOM FROM WANT
By Ian Smillie

“BRAC’s enormous contributions to health, education, and economic development have improved the lives of over 100 million people across the globe. Dr. Abed’s story proves just how much people with vision and commitment can change the world.”

—Bill Clinton, Former President of the United States

Fazle Hasan Abed returned to Bangladesh in 1972 following a devastating cyclone and liberation war to launch a small disaster relief effort. His organization, BRAC, still headquartered in Bangladesh, now touches the lives of over 100 million poor people. Today it is showing women, girls and their communities, from Afghanistan to Uganda, a path to hope and prosperity.

Freedom from Want tells the story of how – in a country where economic crisis is far from new – a small relief initiative became a development powerhouse. It takes us from Abed’s kitchen in Bangladesh, where he experimented with a solution that would eventually save hundreds of thousands of lives from the number-one child killer, diarrhea, to the caves in Afghanistan where BRAC micro-banker Noor Islam was held by kidnappers. The book describes how painstaking trial and error led to innovative social enterprise in tens of thousands of villages and a billion dollar organization that is today 80% self-financing in Bangladesh.

Ian Smillie, who has worked in international development for 30 years, is the perfect person to tell this truly amazing story. His writing goes beyond the statistics and technicalities to bring the people, heart and lessons of BRAC alive. Smillie is donating all royalties to BRAC.

Advance Praise:

“The billion dollars in micro loans that BRAC extends each year to poor people is just the beginning of the story of this remarkable organization. Smillie writes about how determination, ingenuity and enterprise can end poverty.”
–George Soros

“The book is a gripping account of how the practical intellect of one person and the trail-blazing activities of an organization have been able to achieve something close to a miracle.”
—Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate in Economics

“In this beautifully written book, Smillie examines perhaps the most successful program in the world for empowering women and families and truly alleviating poverty in a sustainable way… The book confirmed my strong conviction, born of countless visits to remote villages and urban slums, that when ordinary people are given a chance, they seize it to change their lives, and extraordinary results follow. It should help convince those who still doubt that empowering people is key to successful economic, social and personal development.”
—James Wolfensohn, former President, World Bank Group

“This book is a must for anyone who thinks that foreign aid doesn’t work, that ordinary people can’t pull themselves out of poverty, or that sustainable development can’t happen at a large scale. This is why I asked BRAC to come to Liberia at the Clinton Global Initiative. Its inspiring story gives us hope that Liberia can use citizen power to rebuild and transform the lives of the poorest to bring about health, wealth and greater well-being.”
—Ellen-Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia

Did you know?

• BRAC is the biggest non-governmental, nonprofit organization in the world – in terms of its budget, its staff and the number of people it reaches. BRAC is the biggest international NGO in Afghanistan, working very effectively in some of the most difficult areas. BRAC has broad-based development programs in East Africa and in countries recovering from war: Sudan, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
• BRAC provides more than $1 billion a year in micro loans to poor people; the repayment rate is more than 97%.
• BRAC pioneered a program for diagnosing and treating tuberculosis that is now used worldwide. BRAC treats almost 100,000 TB patients a year and has a 92% cure rate.
• BRAC operates more primary schools in Bangladesh than all the nursery, primary and secondary schools in England combined.
• BRAC’s dairy processes more than 70,000 liters of milk a day. The milk is produced entirely by villagers in every district of Bangladesh, none owning more than one or two cows.
• Students from across the world attend the BRAC University; thousands of villagers use its libraries and its on-line computer centers. The BRAC Bank has become one of the largest and most trusted in Bangladesh in only eight years of operation, and its lending concentrates almost entirely on small enterprise development, one notch up from microfinance.

 

Freedom From Want: The Remarkable Success Story of BRAC, The Global Grassroots Organization that’s Winning the Fight Against Poverty April 2009 / 304 pages / Paperback / 978-1-56549-294-3 / $24.95