One in 20 people in Bangladesh live in extreme poverty. They face multifaceted challenges, such as access to basic services, but also emerging challenges such as rising living costs and climate impacts.
BRAC pioneered the Graduation approach in 2002, when we recognised that there was a subset of people who were living in situations of poverty so entrenched that they could not even benefit from microfinance. It has four pillars - livelihood promotion, financial inclusion, social mobilisation and social protection.
Graduation approach unlocks potential through a holistic, time-bound and context-specific set of interventions over 12-36 months, which strengthens agency, restores dignity, and puts people on a pathway to self-reliance. 100% of the participants in Graduation cohorts are women, and 97% reported in 2023 that they had gained control over their income and family resources.
Graduation has long-term benefits - a randomised control trial by the London School of Economics found 95% of participants continued to improve their living standards when measured even eleven years after the programme ended. The approach has been implemented by BRAC in 17 countries across the world. It has now been adapted through partnerships with over 100 organisations across more than 50 countries.
Graduation at a glance
2.3 million
families have graduated out of extreme poverty in Bangladesh
9x
increase in savings among participants after the program ends, plus a 37% increase in earnings with an ROI of USD 3.21 for every USD 1 spent
93%
of participants sustain the benefits 10+ years after graduation
Four steps to ending extreme poverty
Featured stories
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Devex | Ending extreme poverty is within reach. We can’t give up
The Sustainable Development Goals launched by the U.N. in 2015 set the ambitious target of eradicating extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $2.15 a day as goal No. 1. While there has been some improvement — in 2019, 8.5% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty, down from 10.8% in 2015 — recent crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, conflict, and escalating climate impacts, have pushed us backward.
If the mission is possible, we have the resources, and we know what works, why are we off track, and what should we do to achieve SDG1? -Shameran Abed, BRAC International Executive Director, and Esther Duflo, Nobel economist
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Project Syndicate | How to strengthen anti-poverty efforts
Even before the pandemic reversed progress in reducing extreme poverty, policies and programs largely failed to meet the needs of the poorest and most marginalized. Unless that failure is corrected, the most severe forms of poverty will remain entrenched long after the COVID-19 crisis ends.
Programs need to reach people in the most extreme states of poverty, must empower people living in extreme poverty to build long-term resilience, need to treat poverty as multifaceted and context-specific, and must engage local communities and governments. -Shameran Abed, Executive Director, BRAC International
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Upward mobility for the world’s destitute
Almost all gains on poverty have come from pulling up those just under the extreme poverty line, rather than from progress amid the ultra-poor: roughly the half-billion people who live on less than 75 cents a day. These truly destitute people have tended to stay that way.
The BRAC program, adapted to local conditions, has been replicated in 20 countries, some of them on a wide scale. -
Our hard work slowly paid off. We became our community’s favorite vegetable vendor. Then, because there was also a demand for general household goods, we used the proceeds from the cart to open a small corner store… There were always new faces arriving in [our community], and the demand for fresh vegetables kept increasing.”
Shahinur
Ultra-Poor Graduation participant
Latest news
Case study: how Asma graduated out of extreme poverty in Bangladesh
The Wall Street Journal | A guaranteed income won’t stop people from wanting to work
Nyamagabe District, Rwanda signs MoU with BRAC to launch district-led Graduation program
This is the story of Lizel Sol, from Oppermansdrop in the Free State, South Africa
