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    Targeting the poorest in microfinance: poverty outreach of BDP ultra poor programme
    (BRAC Research and Evaluation Division (RED), 2006-08) Barua, Proloy; Sulaiman, Munshi
    Despite the general consensus that microfinance does not reach the poorest; recent evidence suggests that nearly 15% of microfinance clients in Bangladesh are among the poorest. It is from the realization that even within the existing microfinance membership of BRAC, there is a significant percentage of the poorest; the CFPR-TUP programme has included a special focus on this segment of the poor what it calls the ‘BDP ultra poor’. So, BDP ultra poor are those struggling members of existing village organization (VO) or very poor households in a village who with some additional support can more fully participate and benefit from microfinance services. This study attempts to assess the targeting effectiveness of the BDP ultra poor programme by measuring relative poverty of BDP ultra poor. A total of 1,339 households were surveyed from 30 area offices consisting of BDP ultra poor, VO members and non-VO members. Findings show that 46% of BDP ultra poor households belong to the poorest quartile and most of the remaining BDP ultra poor households belong to moderate poor quartile that suggests the programme is being able to concentrate on the target population. It was also found that the current focus on BDP ultra poor targeting is on the poorer VO members since majority of BDP ultra poor households was selected from existing BRAC microfinance VOs. To improve targeting effectiveness of BDP ultra poor package further, the focus will have to be on the poorest households outside the VOs most of whom have never participated in any microfinance programmes and possessed extremely low poverty score
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    Poverty and BRAC’s microcredit programme: exploring some linkages
    (BRAC Research and Evaluation Division (RED), 1997) Zaman, Hassan
    This paper looks at BRAC’s Rural Development Programmes’ (RDP) interventions and consumption based poverty using household expenditure data collected from 3518 households in fourteen villages in Matlab between April and August 1995. Poverty lines and measures are constructed to compare the socioeconomic status of BRAC members relative to non-members. These poverty measures are also used to compare BRAC members according to membership length, type of inputs received and loan size. The bivariate analysis suggests that the poorest members of the village are selected towards the beginning of RDP’s operations with newer members coming from the moderate poor group. The multivariate analysis focuses on the relative impact of RDP’s inputs, particularly credit, and caters for the crucial issue of selectivity bias. The results suggest that whilst borrowing beyond a certain loan threshold (10000 taka) is significantly associated with improvements in welfare for the ‘typical’ BRAC member this result does not hold for the poorest members.
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    The impact of social and economic development programmes on health and well-being: a BRAC–ICDDR,B collaborative project in Matlab
    (BRAC Research and Evaluation Division (RED), 1995) Bhuiya, Abbas; Chowdhury, A.M.R
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    An assessment of BRAC’s popular theatre: knowledge grounding and effects
    (BRAC Research and Evaluation Division (RED), 2014-12) Pervez, Anis; Samadder, Mrinmoy
    Popular theatre as a communication medium has gained immense attention and is widely practiced in Bangladesh by various NGOs for raising consciousness in achieving rights and justice required for social development. Likewise, BRAC has been using popular theatre as a communication channel to disseminate development messages among the people for whom development is addressed, and felt the necessity to assess to what extent the knowledge packed by such messages is grounded into people’s cognition besides evaluating the strengths and weakness of popular theatre as practiced by BRAC. This study presents such an assessment conducted by using a triangulation method comprising survey, focus group discussion, and case studies. The study observes that knowledge is grounded at a high moderate rate and people have no problem in identifying popular theatre as a distinct form for entertainment and communication. People at a large considers popular theatre as a means for extending education unveiling social ills while also suggesting ways out of such underdevelopment. Drama group is viewed as a change-maker. There is a need for post-performance dialogue, which is not practiced regularly. Nevertheless, popular theatre, if properly addressed and practiced in combination with other development programs, is likely to help develop a counter discourse that is required for a sustainable social development.
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    Impact evaluation of economic empowerment of the poor and vulnerable women in Narayanganj
    (BRAC Research and Evaluation Division (RED), 2017-09) Khatoon, Fathema Zhura; Khan, Safayet
    Women are generally deprived of equal access to productive resources and economic opportunities, across the globe. Empowerment gives women the capacity to participate, together with men, in the shaping of society, to influence development at all levels of society and to make decisions that promote their families’ and their own well-being. BRAC Gender Justice and Diversity (GJD) programme is implementing a project which targets poor and vulnerable women in Narayanganj District. The specific objectives of the impact study are: to assess the level of economic participation of poor and vulnerable women, identify barriers that restrict access to economically productive activities and assess the knowledge and practice level of local service providers. To evaluate the impact of the project, the study used both qualitative and quantitative methods including the use of the Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) tool. The baseline survey was conducted with 1,300 women but a year later during the endline data collection only 1,118 women were revisited. There was about a 14% dropout from the estimated baseline sample size. The conclusion was therefore made from 1,118 women whom the researcher met during both baseline and end line data collection. The baseline survey revealed that only 1.0 per cent of the women have their own business but 32.1 per cent are involved in income generating activities. After the end line data collection we found that women’s involvement in income generating activities significantly increased as the percentages of women engaged in IGA doubled in the treatment group. Women’s savings also increased significantly during this time. However, taking a loan for future endeavour decreased. The monthly income from IGA of the treatment group almost doubled (now around 4,244 Taka) from the baseline but it does not statistically differ significantly from the control group. Other empowerment indicators such as women’s decision-making ability, mobility and knowledge on gender changed a little within a year. However, the empowerment indicators were still not significantly different from the control group.
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    How sustainable are the impacts of vocational training?
    (BRAC Research and Evaluation Division (RED), 2018-06) Rahman, Atiya; Anindita, Bhattacharjee; Rahman, Rehnuma; Samadder, Zion Rabbi
    In Bangladesh, school dropout rate at both the primary and secondary levels are quite high. Majority of these school dropout children end up being unemployed or in low quality jobs. Hence, training programmes can be a potential solution to address the rising unemployment among the school dropout youths. In this context, BRAC piloted a programme titled ‘Skills Training for Advancing Resources (STAR)’ in the five divisions of Dhaka, Chattogram, Sylhet, Rajshahi and Khulna in 2012, in partnership with the Bureau of Non-formal Education (BNFE). During this pilot phase, the programme provided livelihood skills training to a pool of 1000 urban adolescents aged 14-18 years, who completed five years of schooling under the Basic Education for Hard to Reach Urban Working Children (BEHTRUWC) project of the Bureau of Non-Formal Education (BNFE). This study uses three rounds of quantitative data (collected in 2012, 2013 and 2015) to estimate the short and long-run impacts of the pilot phase of the STAR programme by employing different techniques such as Difference-in-Difference (DiD) with fixed effect, Propensity Score Matching (PSM) and DiD using PSM and also includes qualitative methods to supplement the quantitative findings. Specifically, this study estimates the impacts on employment, income, savings, early marriage, etc. of adolescents, and on household welfare. Findings show that the positive impacts on the adolescents’ labour market participation and monthly income are sustainable and higher in the long-run. In particular, the participants significantly shifted to the skilled labour market in the long-run. The impact on employment has been found to be higher for female participants. The programme also significantly reduces early marriage (for females). Additionally, positive impacts are found on empowerment, self-confidence and workplace environment. The study recommends- keeping the profile of trades consistent with market demands and the participants’ age as well as their individual interests, and ensuring post training follow up by programme staff, among others, to make this programme even more effective.