Safeguarding

BRAC commits to ‘putting people first’ in all activities and addresses safeguarding throughout its work by following a survivor-centric approach. Providing lifesaving services to people living in marginalised conditions, and who are excluded from the existing government and non-government services, is a challenging task. While working with them, organisations must be committed to a do-no-harm principle, ensure safeguarding of the people involved, and properly orient service providers to follow ethical standards.

While implementing development and humanitarian interventions as the world’s largest NGO, BRAC believes that every employee, supplier, downstream partner, visitor, programme participant (including children and persons with disabilities) have the right to be protected from all forms of harm and abuse, which include - bullying, sexual harassment, intimidation, violence, humiliation, discrimination, neglect and exploitation.

BRAC is a global non-government organisation, working to eliminate poverty and all forms of discrimination and injustice. Promoting gender equality and women empowerment is a strong commitment of BRAC, through various programmatic interventions, as well as strengthening organisational system mechanisms. Promoting safeguarding is one of the commitments and operations of BRAC.

BRAC pledges to strengthen its process of safeguarding compliance, and has further committed to ensure that safeguarding measures are incorporated across different aspects of the organisation in governance, human resources, partnering, recruitment, risk management, safe programme design, complaint mechanism and capacity development.

Key Highlights

54,000+

staff members received safeguarding training online and in the classroom

2,959

persons participated during the pilot phase of safeguarding awareness discussions in community forums, rural areas and urban spaces

61

districts and 414 sub-districts to collect all available services to connect people with various referral services

WHAT WE DO

Safe governance: To ensure accountability within BRAC, for further strengthening of safeguarding
Safe people practices: To ensure staff members and volunteers are properly onboarded, so that they are suitable to work with children, adolescents, and persons with disabilities
Safe programming: To ensure consultation with targeted community people, identify programmatic safeguarding risks of new projects to ensure its mitigation, and to further follow safe programme design guideline and checklist during design phase
Safe partnering: To ensure safeguarding for all BRAC’s external stakeholders and capacity building on safeguarding, and to select partners who will comply with BRAC’s safeguarding standards with safe entities and safe policy practices
Safe risk management: Safeguarding components are incorporated into risk management framework and tools, to assess and mitigate safeguarding risks
Safe reporting: To ensure safe reporting channels and encourage everyone to report through BRAC’s helpline, email, letters, respective programme/department supervisors or safeguarding champions, and whistle blowing policy based on anonymity. If anyone is aggrieved by the decision, there is also an available option to appeal to an independent Ombudsperson

HOW WE DO IT

Policies, guidelines, and procedures: Different policies and procedures enable BRAC’s staff members, volunteers, programme participants and partners to be protected against behavioral misconduct, and all kinds of harm and abuse. Based on the previous organisational policies and practices, BRAC has adopted a safeguarding policy and procedure, child and adolescent protection policy, sexual harassment elimination policy, prevention of workplace bullying and violence policy, whistleblowing policy, adults with special needs/persons with disabilities, and safe recruitment policy.
Capacity development: To have clear understanding and insights on safeguarding concepts and practices for BRAC’s staff members, volunteers, and programme participants
Build awareness: Develop and disseminate awareness and communication materials by using print and virtual platforms, to promote safeguarding among the internal staff members, volunteers, programme participants and community people, and also to the various external audiences
Safeguarding charter: Established in different BRAC programmes and departments, it acts as a live resource where commitments unique to each programme/department’s objective and activities are included
Safe recruitment: Developed a safe recruitment guideline, including behaviour-based questionnaire to measure understanding of the applicant. Additionally, the safeguarding team oriented all relevant staff members to help the organisation to recruit and vet individuals working for the organisation
Safeguarding Champions: Over 190 nominated safeguarding champions (HO and field levels) from different BRAC programmes and departments have been trained to advocate for safeguarding and for incorporating safeguarding activities into programmatic and departmental functions. They have also been trained to respond to any incident in a sensitive and systematic manner
Safeguarding lens: Included safeguarding components into different organisational and programmatic policies; different assessment tools, like for partnerships and programme design; checklists for programme design, internal audit, and monitoring; guidelines, like on how to communicate with survivors; standard operating procedure (SoP); Code of Conduct.
24/7 helpline: To address any kinds of safeguarding reports, the 24/7 helpline provides necessary information and assistance with first-hand psychosocial counseling support to the complainant, whistleblower and/or survivor

WHY IT WORKS

Recognition: Recognising BRAC’s safeguarding practices since its inception, as it aligns with BRAC’s mission, vision and values
Safe work environment: Addressing behavioral misconduct and harmful behaviours in the workplace through safeguarding policies and procedures, and capacity building and awareness
Capacity development and awareness: Over 5,400 people provided with online and classroom training so far. For community people and volunteers, training sessions have been customised before rolling out. Short videos on different safeguarding policies, posters, and leaflets have been developed to be disseminated. Campaigns on workplace code of conduct have been launched through online platforms and social media
Empowering to speak out: The safeguarding team has created 145 field-level safeguarding champions’ groups from 15 different programmes/departments, called Shorukhha Bondhu (a Bengali term meaning protective friend), to help people to reach out to persons they trust. More people are determined to create a safe work environment for themselves and others in the workplace, and are reporting on safeguarding violations
Committees: Two functional complaint review committees, the grievance management committee (GMC) and sexual harassment redressal committee (SHRC), play an important role to address complaints that are received. The committees hold regular monthly meetings and give recommended decisions after reviewing the reports, as well as provide the accused with an opportunity of hearing
Supporting safeguarding survivors: Local service mapping is regularly conducted to collect and disseminate available service mapping information
Safeguarding network: A knowledge sharing platform on safeguarding for different organisations in Bangladesh
Collective ownership: Our 21 safeguarding champions conduct quarterly meetings, where they share knowledge with their respective programmes and support functions. A cross-programme core committee plays an active role to ensure strategic guidance collectively. Till date, 29 programmes/departments have developed their safeguarding charter, and incorporated an action plan and budget in their annual operational plan
Accountability: Safeguarding checklists/tools are a part of the internal audit process and monitoring mechanisms to measure knowledge and practices at BRAC. Quarterly reports on safeguarding cases are presented to the senior management on a regular basis. Regular safeguarding progress and updates are shared with the Board (BRAC and BI), and safeguarding champions from respective programmes/support functions to report their progress on quarterly basis. Periodic (3- 4 months) follow-up of the safeguarding risk register is going on for different programmes/departments at present, and HR functions are ensuring and safe people practices at the workplace