BRAC’s social development programs provide people with the tools to unlock their own potential, and boost their confidence in their own abilities to change their lives. Our programming is co-created with communities, and implemented by staff recruited from the same communities, so they own the impact from the start. We also work with the full ecosystem in each community, including civil society, governments and private sectors, to create enabling environments, and push for systemic change. Our programming currently spans 14 countries across Asia and Africa, and is implemented more broadly by organizations and governments across 100 countries.
How BRAC Creates Lasting Change
People trapped in a cycle of destitution often don’t realize their lives can be changed for the better through their own activities. Once they understand that, it’s like a light gets turned on.”
- Sir Fazle Hasan Abed
Explore BRAC’s Impact and Innovation
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Does BRAC offer a different model for development organizations?
This Devex article examines how BRAC’s holistic, scale-oriented approach to development differs from more fragmented interventions, discussing how the organization designs programs that can be expanded across countries while remaining responsive to local needs.
We don't want to do things that are small, things that are on the edges and only look good, things that are impactful only in very small doses and can’t be scaled. -- Sir Fazle Hasan Abed
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Shifting the power: Why development dynamics need to change
The Impact Room podcast explores the need to redistribute power in the development sector, arguing that real impact comes when local communities drive their own priorities and solutions rather than being passive recipients.
BRAC essentially looks at poverty as a multidimensional problem. There is no one magic bullet to solve this issue of poverty, so it has to be attacked from all fronts driven by the needs of the people. -
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Where private school is not a privilege
In the New York Times, this piece explores how BRAC built an inclusive school system in Bangladesh designed to overcome the many barriers—from poverty and child labor to gender bias—that had kept children from getting an education.
BRAC designed its school system to address all the reasons children didn’t attend schools. -
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Scaling up innovations with government
In the Stanford Social Innovation Review, this article explores how governments can partner with social innovators to bring proven solutions to scale—highlighting lessons from South Asia on moving from pilot projects to nationwide impact.
In South Asia, where a great deal of innovation is happening in the development sector, creating mechanisms to connect the vast public sector apparatus with new models for poverty alleviation is of critical importance. The challenge is to strengthen the link between innovation and scale. Doing that begins with a clear understanding of the barriers that innovators in government and other large institutions face in scaling their work and an examination of what’s working. -