As global leaders gather in Paris for The Summit for a New Global Financing Pact on 22-23 June, BRAC and Groupe SOS directors, two global champions of social entrepreneurship, are calling for large scale investment in innovations in countries on the frontlines of social, environmental and climate crises – not only because it is the right thing to do, but because it is the smart thing to do.

BY JERÔME OBERREIT AND ALEXANDRE LOURIÉ

If you want to predict the effects of global warming in Europe, just look to Bangladesh. Despite producing merely 0.56% of global CO2 emissions, this country in South Asia is among the most vulnerable to the climate crisis. Floods, storms, intensifying cyclones, rising sea levels: the consequences of the climate crisis are numerous and visible, and could lead to the displacement of one in seven Bangladeshis by 2050. As a response, the country has introduced a number of measures and allocated a significant proportion of its national budget to combating climate change (over 7% between 2021 and 2022), while innovating with civil society organizations.

In Europe, we can’t ignore record-high temperatures in the summer and uncontrollable fires. Despite this, the climate crisis is not seen as a matter of life or death – but it is. 

Investing today in the global south to mitigate and adapt to the effects of the climate crisis not only responds to an emergency, but – if that weren’t enough – will also result in long-term benefits for the rest of the world, which will sooner or later be faced with the same issues.

We have much to learn from those whose lives are being torn apart by the climate crisis now. Today’s most innovative thinking and solutions are being generated by some of the most impacted countries. For instance, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley is advancing the agenda on reform of the global financial architecture, and climate experts from Bangladesh are leading the charge on the Loss and Damage agenda. To stem the tide of displacement and climate migration anticipated in the decades ahead, Bangladesh is innovating climate-resilient farming practices and developing salinity and drought-resistant crops, creating pathways for more resilient livelihoods for households living in extreme poverty in the process. The experiences of international non-governmental organizations such as BRAC, a pioneer in social development and social enterprises which works with over 100 million people living in the global south and Groupe SOS, European leader of social and solidarity economy, is proof that we can scale-up such green and social innovations.

Fighting the climate crisis and social inequalities offer attractive returns on investment (ROI) for society. However, because their returns materialize over a longer term, obtaining critical catalytic investment is often difficult. The associated risk of these investments is often considered high, when in reality, this short-term vision obscures the real risk by missing a major element in the equation: the cost of inaction, or the opportunity cost of doing nothing or too little.

There are examples of bold investments in times of crises. During COVID-19, France deployed massive loan programs in order to avoid the disastrous human, social and economic consequences in the long term. The same is true for Brazil, Thailand and South Africa, for example, where this radical investment approach proved its worth in the fight against AIDS, by anticipating very high human and social costs over the long term. These investments paid additional dividends as solutions developed in these countries were then reverse-adapted in the global north, such as the practice of transferring tasks from doctors to nurses, and then to patients themselves.

We don’t need more loss of life at an epidemic scale to take action. The situation is already dire: 700 million people live below the extreme poverty line, and current forecasts predict a 4°C or even 5°C rise in temperatures by 2100 compared with the last century if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. The cost of our inaction today will be massive in the long term. We therefore need to encourage public and private capital to target players in the social and solidarity economy, who provide solutions to the climate crisis and the fight against extreme poverty. 

A new ROI calculation for long-term, sustainable investments

On 22-23 June, heads of state from around the world are expected in Paris for The Summit for a New Global Financing Pact. The aim is to ‘reshape the architecture of development and climate finance for a stronger and more efficient international financial system.’ This is an opportunity to rethink our investments, beyond short-term, financial returns. Currently, our ROI calculation is incomplete. It will remain so if we fail to take into account the multiplying, long-term and global returns that occur from applying the solutions and innovations developed in the South.

In order to respond to the social and climate emergency, in the short term in the most affected countries, and in the longer term at a global level, we need a new ROI calculation that factors in the cost of inaction as well as the long-term indirect financial, social and environmental returns. Where global financial resources are limited, we can’t afford not to invest where ideas and solutions thrive, and where the returns are highest.

Jerôme Oberreit is the Executive Director of BRAC Global
Alexandre Lourié is the International Managing Director at Groupe SOS

Climate and poverty: Green and social investments in the global south will show long-term returns worldwide

Successive crises including COVID-19, climate change, conflicts, and the emerging global food crisis will force 75 to 95 million more people into extreme poverty this year compared to pre-pandemic estimates, according to the World Bank. With 700 million people already living in extreme poverty today (back to 2018 levels), people and societies urgently need social protection to cope with economic shocks.

Amidst calls for expanded social protection – from the G20, the G7, the International Labour Organisation, the OECD, the UN, World Bank, and others –     the question arises: are people living in extreme poverty best served by a broad “universalist” approach or do they also need poverty alleviation programmes that are better tailored to their needs?

Our experiences implementing the Graduation Approach in the Global South over more than 20 years, and as part of the Leadership Collaborative to End Ultra-Poverty (a consortium of 75+ participants from 30+ institutions including INGO/NGOs, researchers, governments, bi/multilateral agencies, and others), has shown us that a large subset of people in extreme poverty are especially marginalised, socially isolated, and unable to tap into existing government services. “Targeting” is central to serving this group, in tandem with universal social protection floors.

Households in extreme poverty are disempowered in many ways. In addition to social exclusion, they often lack income to cover basic needs, as well as skills and capital to access productive livelihoods, savings, and other financial tools. They might lack access to healthcare, clean drinking water and education. Not only are they more likely to work informal jobs that are not covered by contributory social protection schemes, but they are also less likely to have the information or documentation to access non-contributory programmes. All these factors contribute to psychosocial stress that results in lower confidence, motivation and hope for the future. Without a more intentional approach, broad-based or universal floors are still likely to leave these households behind.

“Graduation” for those furthest behind: a transformative effect on women and their households

Graduation rests on the understanding that extreme poverty is about more than a lack of income. It typically entails a lack of clean drinking water, access to healthcare, and education, among other deprivations, requiring more than single-source interventions like cash transfers. While cash support provided by many social protection schemes is extremely valuable, it is often less effective at sustainably breaking extreme poverty cycles.

Graduation, sometimes described as an “economic inclusion” intervention, is tailored to address the multidimensional aspects of extreme poverty, to achieve a long-term, transformative impact. This is backed by a rich body of research substantiating outcomes spanning more than a decade, from multiple contexts and a variety of implementation models, including those layered onto government social safety nets. One such recent study of a large-scale Graduation programme in Bangladesh, reaffirms the presence of a poverty trap, which requires a “big push”; a significant transfer of assets, in order for households to escape and continue moving on a pathway out of poverty over time.

The Graduation approach – a multifaceted set of time-bound interventions, provides such a “big push”. These interventions generally include meeting participants’ immediate basic consumption needs, providing training and assets for income generation, financial literacy training and savings support, and social empowerment through community engagement and life skills training—all facilitated through in-person coaching. The Graduation approach is more complex than a singularly focused social protection or jobs intervention. It is costlier and harder – albeit demonstrably possible – to scale. It can also be cost-effective – but not for everyone. In the 20 years our community has been implementing, evaluating, and evolving Graduation, we found that these programmes are most transformative and cost-effective for women of working age who live in extreme poverty, because they have the working capacity, but lacked the skills, and financial and social capital to enter into productive livelihoods.

Critically, Graduation is not about graduating out of social protection schemes, but into a sustained level of resilience, part of which is enabled by the linkage to available social protection schemes, in addition to social empowerment and livelihood interventions.

Universal vs. targeted: a false dichotomy

Some experts have argued that targeting a specific population is too narrow in focus, can be inaccurate as a methodology and exclude many in need. We believe that pitting universalist social protection approaches against targeted poverty alleviation programmes like Graduation is a false dichotomy. It should not be an either/or choice but a matter of finding the right approach for specific populations and contexts within a broader framework of inclusion. We believe that a targeted intervention like the Graduation approach, in tandem with other social protection schemes, is the most effective path for these households.

From the above, we draw three conclusions from our work:

1)  Universal social protection will advance the inclusion of people living in extreme poverty – as well as wider “at risk” populations who teeter along contentiously defined poverty lines.

2) Targeted support for people living in extreme poverty can benefit the universal agenda by overcoming current barriers to the inclusion of these communities.

3) People living in extreme poverty need more than access to social protection; additional interventions, like social empowerment, financial and savings skills, and sustainable livelihoods, all of which are key elements within the Graduation approach, can enable them to break out of the poverty trap.

How Graduation can complement social protection for women in extreme poverty – OECD

The climate crisis most severely impacts women in extreme poverty due to a combination of factors including social, economic, and cultural, something experts have termed a “threat multiplier.”

Women are more likely to experience extreme poverty than men, which often means they lack access to the resources and knowledge that would enable them to build resilience to shocks such as those caused by the climate crisis. Recent projections estimate up to 216 million people will be displaced by climate change by 2050. Over half of these will be women and girls.

At The BOMA Project (BOMA) and BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative (UPGI), we recognize the intrinsic linkages between issues of gender equality, social and economic inclusion, and worsening climate shocks. We also see women as critical agents of change in both climate resilience and climate mitigation.

BOMA’s Rural Entrepreneur Access Project (REAP) is designed to respond to the unique challenges of climate-vulnerable contexts. Developed in the arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs) of northern Kenya, REAP involves 16 to 24 months of sequenced interventions which incorporate environmental considerations into every step.

In 2019, BOMA began a climate mitigation-focused adaptation known as Green REAP in the Kirisia Forest region of Samburu County, in northern Kenya. The Kirisia ecosystem supports a population of about 50,000 people, predominantly Samburu nomadic pastoralists who access the forest for timber and honey and for livestock pasture during the dry season. Households depend heavily on the forest for its resources and for its spiritual and aesthetic importance.

Despite Kirisia’s centrality to the community, unrelenting drought has caused many people to lose their livestock and turn to forest extractives as a way to survive. Since 1973, the forest has lost a quarter of its tree cover.

Green REAP is designed to create a pathway out of poverty while also protecting the forest. Between 2019 and 2021, 60 percent of participants shifted away from extractive livelihoods and into sustainable green enterprises including tree nurseries as well as aloe and honey production. Sixty percent of participants have joined their local community conservation group and are taking the lead in forest management and restoration. Meanwhile, deforestation has reduced dramatically and more than 30,000 tree seedlings have been planted.

Before Pamela Lonolngenje enrolled in BOMA’s Green REAP program, she was reliant on the destructive and exhausting practice of harvesting charcoal from Kirisia. After enrolling in Green REAP, Pamela formed a business group with two other women from her community and launched a kiosk.

She also joined the local Naramat Community Forest Association (CFA). As a CFA member, Pamela gained access to a carefully selected sample of wood and other assorted forest products. Pamela and her group also received training in mass tree planting, wetland management, and other forest and conservation management activities.

“Protecting the forest doesn’t mean we have to give up on our livelihoods,” Pamela said. “We can actually make more income by taking care of the land that is our home.”

In Kairouan, Tunisia, the Ministry for Agriculture, Water Resources and Fisheries, the Ministry of Social Affairs, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and the Adaptation Fund have partnered with BRAC UPGI to support the design and implementation of a Graduation pilot program within the larger Economic, Social and Solidarity Project (IESS- Kairouan) livelihoods and natural resource management program. This project will place a particular emphasis on strengthening climate-resilient livelihoods for women and youth.

Regions in MENA are particularly vulnerable to climate shocks such as increased frequency and severity of extreme weather, changes in temperature and precipitation, and increased soil erosion. Compounded with unsustainable management of natural resources, these shocks contribute to long-term loss of livelihood and malnutrition, leading to significant human capital loss.

BRAC is working with the government and IFAD to integrate climate resilience throughout the design and implementation of the program by prioritizing the most climate vulnerable households and aligning Graduation program components with climate adaptations. This includes identifying climate-resilient livelihoods, risk management strategies, and aligning nutrition-boosting kitchen gardens with the government’s water and transportation infrastructure plans.

One promising livelihood option emerging from the ongoing design phase of this program is prickly pear cultivation. Prickly pear cacti provide a wealth of value chain potential and climate resilience impacts: almost all parts of the cacti can be used for food, livestock fodder, or marketable products, and by requiring up to 80 percent less water than traditional crops, they’re naturally suited to drought-prone regions.

Beyond its household impacts, prickly pear cultivation can also reduce climate changes’ impact on the environment by reducing soil erosion and helping maintain the water table. When used as livestock fodder, it also helps reduce the strain of grazing on the land, and it can encourage biodiversity by acting as a shelter for birds and mammals.

Investing in holistic programs which adapt to local needs and constraints to build the resilience of women in extreme poverty is necessary for long-term climate adaptation and mitigation. As climate shocks increase in frequency and severity, we need long-term solutions that empower local residents to build their own resilience so they are better positioned to withstand future climate-related shocks.

Working with communities and local leaders to sustainably manage natural resources and to identify context-appropriate solutions is critical to achieving climate resilience in the most vulnerable communities. Political will at the national level is also necessary.

“There is a need to make sure ministries are combined in their approaches – we can no longer work in a parallel fashion as it is unfortunately too often the case,” said Philippe Remy, Country Director for the Near East, North Africa, Europe and Central Asia Division at IFAD. “There are not many cases in the world where climate change policies are implemented in a comprehensive way. We can support this approach at project level, making different ministerial representatives work together and look for solutions to make it sustainable.”

International institutions like IFAD have taken steps to build more climate resilience through their longstanding commitment to localized climate adaptation, as well as increased financial commitments which we’ve recently seen come from the Asian Development Bank and World Bank. It is these kinds of necessary steps we applaud and encourage international organizations to take.

Preventing the worst impacts of climate change on the most vulnerable populations is possible. By investing in the building of climate resilience for the most marginalized and vulnerable populations today, countries can reduce extreme poverty and empower women to build sustainable, resilient futures. The climate crisis is man-made. With investments in climate-responsive programs, it can be unmade.

Leveraging Local Capability to Build Climate Resilience among African Women in Extreme Poverty

BRAC welcomes the adoption of the Doha Programme of Action (DPoA) for the Least Developed Countries for the Decade 2022-2031 by the member states of the United Nations. We applaud its strong commitment to inclusive social protection systems for people living in extreme poverty.

The DPoA is a critical document for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and leaving no one behind. While the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) represent only 46 of the 193 countries in the world, these countries host about 40% of the world’s population living in poverty and face significant development challenges. The DPoA’s focus on achieving sustainable and inclusive recovery, building resilience to future shocks, and eradicating extreme poverty serves as a model for the international community.

BRAC commends the DPoA for its inclusion of a target to reach at least 350 million people living in extreme poverty in LDCs through social protection systems. DPoA is a model for the inclusive policy language needed to guide investments and interventions for the most marginalized communities. It is imperative that the international community and governments intentionally design programs and policies for the people who are poorest, otherwise we risk not meeting our global commitment of leaving no one behind. As UNDP’s recent research on marginalized communities emphasizes, “targeted actions are needed to reach those marginalized who are usually disproportionately represented among those left behind.”

This is especially the case for social protection systems that are essential to achieving SDG 1. Social protection systems are crucial for not only meeting basic needs and escaping extreme poverty, but also for supporting inclusive growth: 36 percent of all people who escape extreme poverty are enabled to do so through social protection programs, and one percent of GDP invested in social protection leads to 1.1 percent GDP growth and 1.8 percent growth in government tax revenues on average. However, social protection systems often fail to reach those furthest behind. Only 47 percent of people worldwide are covered by even a single social protection program, while a mere 21 percent of the bottom quintile of earners are covered in low-income countries. From the global to the local level, programs and policies must prioritize reaching people in extreme poverty and addressing their multidimensional needs and the challenges that perpetuate the poverty trap. Otherwise, the deepest forms of poverty will remain entrenched.

The inclusive language in the DPoA sets an important standard for the international community, and BRAC hopes to be a partner for its full implementation through our evidence and learning on effective interventions for people living in extreme poverty such as the Graduation approach. The strengthened commitment and partnership represented by the DPoA between the LDCs and their development partners, including civil society partners, is necessary for addressing large-scale aspirations like poverty eradication and inclusive growth for shock-prone communities. As BRAC celebrates our 50th anniversary and a history of innovations that break the poverty trap, we recognize the need for ambitious partnerships to meet the needs of the people who are most marginalized.

Cross-sector partnerships will be critical to take interventions proven to be effective at reaching and empowering people in the deepest forms of poverty to scale. This will require governments to take the lead, with support from multilateral institutions, researchers, civil society, and NGOs. BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative (UPGI) has worked with government partners across Africa and Asia to integrate the Graduation approach into existing social protection systems to ensure the inclusion for people living in extreme poverty and sustainable impact for these communities. By incorporating Graduation into government social protection systems, countries can better reach people in extreme poverty with existing programs while reducing program costs and improving impact for these communities. For the social protection systems of the LDCs to reach 350 million people in extreme poverty, an explicit focus on this population through approaches like Graduation will be a necessity.

As governments design their National Plans of Action in line with DPoA targets to promote a prosperous and poverty-free future, BRAC looks forward to partnering on our shared vision of eradicating extreme poverty through inclusive, comprehensive, and shock-resilient social protection systems. Scaling the Graduation approach offers one promising path to achieve this.

More information about the scaling of the Graduation approach can be found here. Or, learn more about how to partner with BRAC UPGI.

BRAC Applauds Commitment to Reach 350 Million People in Extreme Poverty in the Doha Programme of Action

This year, BRAC celebrates its 50th anniversary and the 20th anniversary of its flagship Graduation approach. In 1972, Sir Fazle Hasan Abed KCMG (affectionately known at BRAC as ‘Abed bhai’) started BRAC as a small relief program, in the aftermath of the devastating Bhola cyclone and Bangladesh’s hard-won war for independence. 30 years later, BRAC pioneered the first Graduation program. Fast forward to 2022 and BRAC has directly empowered more than 2.1 million households to escape extreme poverty in Bangladesh alone via the Graduation approach and directly implemented or advised on Graduation programs in 15 additional countries. Nearly 92 million people across 75 countries have been reached by 219 economic inclusion programs which share elements of BRAC’s Graduation approach.

Reflecting on this history, our approach to extreme poverty eradication has been guided by four critical principles which underpin BRAC’s past success and future ambitions.

From the first village Abed bhai and his passionate team of volunteers began working with in 1972, BRAC worked from a philosophy of harnessing the innate power, agency and dignity of people, in spite of the vulnerability of their situation. He quickly realized he had to start with the most deprived areas and reach the people in the deepest forms of poverty first. This was more than a duty to serve the most vulnerable. It was the understanding that people living in extreme poverty were being overlooked in spite of their potential to lift themselves from their circumstances if only given the tools and self-belief that others had, to realize their potential.

According to Abed bhai, BRAC sought to embody Paulo Freire’s philosophy that people should be the subject, not the object of development programs. This principle lives on in BRAC’s work with governments today whereby we are demonstrating the power and potential of populations in extreme poverty that have been left behind by traditional economic development policies and practices. People living in extreme poverty must not be considered passive recipients of aid but powerful potential agents of change and progress. This principle continues to drive BRAC’s direct implementation, technical assistance, and advocacy around the Graduation approach.

Extreme poverty is multidimensional and requires a multidimensional approach

BRAC recognized that enabling people to escape extreme poverty would require a holistic approach that includes both social and economic empowerment. In 2006, reflecting on BRAC’s Graduation program in Bangladesh, Abed bhai wrote that, ‘the constraints [people] face in escaping extreme poverty are interlocked in ways that are different from those who are moderately poor. This challenges us to rethink our existing development strategies and interventions for the extreme poor, and come up with better ones that work for them.’ This was the challenge that drove BRAC to initiate what was an experimental programme in 2002, with the idea being ‘to address the constraints that the extreme poor face in asset building, in improving their health, in educating their children, in getting their voices heard, in a comprehensive manner so that they too can aspire, plan, and inch their way out of poverty.’

Evaluate and re-evaluate methods and assumptions

To ensure its programs had lasting impact, BRAC committed itself to a culture of critical self-evaluation, built on humility, curiosity, and rigor. These values led to the uncomfortable realization in the late 1990s that our programs were failing to adequately reach and generate long-term impacts for a subset of households living in the most extreme states of poverty and marginalization, which BRAC dubbed ‘ultra-poverty’. Graduation emerged from BRAC’s findings that its Income Generation for Vulnerable Group Development (IGVGD) program with UN World Food Program (WFP) and the Government of Bangladesh was having positive impacts, but women in ultra-poverty were still unable to access loans by the end of the program and needed more intensive support.

BRAC developed the Graduation approach in response to this need, constantly asking how it could improve the program, and if the assumptions it operated under remained valid. This constant, careful fine-tuning of the program led to significant and sustained impacts captured in randomized controlled trials, and sparking a tide of Graduation adaptations around the world. Even so, sensing that the program was no longer sufficiently suited to the evolving poverty context of Bangladesh in 2016, the Ultra-Poor Graduation (UPG) program probed nearly every aspect of Graduation in a major redesign. For instance, upon realizing its asset transfers were no longer large or diverse enough in the current market, the UPG program doubled their value and expanded the livelihood options available to participants.

Such reevaluations of Graduation have ensured its continued relevance and impact. They would not have been possible without BRAC’s commitment to rigor and connection to the communities we serve. BRAC takes firsthand insights from the field staff and listens to local communities, combining this lived experience with rigorous research through internal evaluations, working with the BRAC Institute of Governance & Development (BIGD), and external research partnerships to ensure program quality.

The qualities listed above would have been sufficient to empower many people to improve their lives through Graduation. But Abed bhai’s vision, and the vision of his successors has always pushed BRAC to think of impact and scale as inseparable. As he often said, “Small is beautiful, but scale is necessary.” Impact at scale is an operating principle for BRAC.

A program is not sufficiently impactful because it can be effective for any one household, but because it has the potential to reach millions of households. This is what BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative now aims to do as part of BRAC International’s efforts to bring an approach born in Bangladesh to the world for extreme poverty eradication. Programs we directly implement like UPG are BRAC’s soul and strength, where our experience, skills, and learnings come from, but we know BRAC – nor any other NGO – cannot achieve our vision for the world alone. Scale is only possible through ambition and collaboration.

By 2026, we aim to reach 4.6 million more households with the Graduation approach by scaling through government uptake with multisectoral partners. Sir Abed’s vision was for BRAC to reach a point where it was no longer needed. At the community level, this meant empowering people to continuously develop and improve their lives long after participating in a BRAC program. At a global scale, this means taking 20 years of experience with Graduation and passing that knowledge to governments, researchers, multilateral institutions, media, and civil society to continue expanding the approach.

With nearly 700 million people still living in extreme poverty globally, we face what may seem an insurmountable challenge. But by committing to the same values which have defined BRAC’s approach to extreme poverty reduction, the international community has the chance to deliver real, meaningful progress toward a world where the deepest forms of poverty are extinct.

“Poverty eradication may be a few years away, but it is possible,” said Shameran Abed, Executive Director of BRAC International, who oversees BRAC’s Graduation programs. “We should be the last generation on earth that sees extreme poverty. The resources are there. The research exists. It’s going to take some convincing of governments. It’s going to take some political will, which requires effective advocacy and technical assistance at the local level, but it can be done.”

50 Years of Combating Extreme Poverty, From Bangladesh to the World

NAIROBI – With the right opportunities, women can play a critical role in the social and economic development of Africa. But what interventions are most effective at empowering more African women to seize such opportunities?

When women have more say in their own social and economic choices, their well-being and that of their households and communities improves. Their families show progress on nearly all development indicators.

For example, a study by the African Economic Research Consortium in Kenya examining the impact of policies to empower women on household nutritional outcomes found that the percentage of underweight children under five years old dropped from 19% to 12% between 2003 and 2014. In Nigeria, a survey of farming households revealed that gender parity significantly reduced household food insecurity. And an analysis of data from nine African countries linked women’s empowerment with improvements in children’s cognitive development, growth, and nutrition.

These household-level benefits trickle up. A 2018 report by the International Monetary Fund associated greater gender equality with increased economic resilience, higher GDP per capita, lower income inequality, and higher labor productivity.

An investment in effective, evidence-based policies that empower women thus is an investment in a country’s overall economic future. But when African governments and their partners commit to invest in women’s empowerment, they first must understand which approaches produce sustained results. Recent evaluations of several programs provide some insights into the best way to set women on a path to long-term self-reliance and improved well-being.

The Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents (ELA) model offers young women a combination of life skills and vocational training. It uses peer mentors to provide information on reproduction and sexual health and instruction in financial literacy and business management. So far, ELA has reached over 200,000 adolescent girls and young women across Uganda, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Nepal, Liberia, and Tanzania.

A randomized controlled trial in Uganda found that young girls in communities with ELA programs were “48% more likely to engage in income generating activity,” primarily self-employment. These villages also benefited from a 34% reduction in teen pregnancy and a 62% reduction in early marriage or cohabitation.

Another model is Graduation, which takes a multi-pronged approach to addressing extreme poverty. The program meets participants’ basic needs, often through connecting them to existing safety net schemes, and then provides assets for income generation and instruction on how to manage them. Participants also receive instruction on financial literacy and life skills training. And all program components are adapted to the local context and implemented through in-person coaching.

A growing body of evidence suggests that this model, by combining support such as cash transfers with more comprehensive initiatives, can have broader and longer-lasting effects than cash transfers alone. Research in South Sudan found that both cash transfers and Graduation had positive effects on consumption, but Graduation also had a longer-term effect on participants’ overall wealth. Similarly, a study in Uganda showed that Graduation led to greater improvement in income, consumption, nutrition, and subjective well-being compared to cash alone.

In Ghana, researchers studied the long-term effects of Graduation by comparing program participants to others who received only a transfer of assets (goats, in this case). The Graduation program provided agricultural jobs and training, health and nutrition information, enrollment in national health insurance, savings accounts, and weekly coaching by program staff, in addition to cash transfers. After three years, the value of Graduation participants’ assets, consumption, and income was higher than those who received only the goats.

Through the Graduation approach, women in Kenya have been able to participate in the economy, send their children to school, improve gender relations, and become leaders in their communities. And in Uganda, young people have learned to increase their savings, boost their productivity, and improve food security for their entire households.

Partnerships between non-governmental organizations, researchers, and governments are critical to bring innovative projects from the pilot stage to full implementation. In the case of Graduation, research partnerships were crucial to the program’s expansion. Researchers monitored the program in various contexts to ensure that government officials understood its effectiveness. Internal and external evaluations also helped improve Graduation over time, as program staff used the data to adapt its design.

The education, social inclusion, and economic integration of African women will shape the future of the continent. NGOs, researchers, and governments must work together to expand programs that have been shown to work and to develop new ways to encourage women’s empowerment and self-reliance. Africa’s future depends on it.

Empowering African Women to Shape the Continent’s Future – Project Syndicate

Stakeholder collaboration and working together are crucial when it comes to adapting and implementing new approaches to poverty reduction. BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative and its partners around the world bridge cultures, languages, ways of working, and even oceans in order to reach our collective goals to empower people living in poverty and facilitate their upward trajectory towards successful and sustainable livelihoods.

After our successful Regional Dialogues focused on Africa and Asia, “Applying Evidence to Achieve Long-Term Development, Poverty Eradication, and Inclusive Growth“, I had the opportunity to further dive into this topic and frame a more nuanced story of long-term partnership with Karin Schelzig, Principal Social Sector Specialist, East Asia Department at the Asian Development Bank (ADB). During this interview, Karin used the ADB’s recent experience introducing the Graduation approach in the Philippines which has been an incredibly collaborative project involving two government ministries, five local governments, four departments of ADB, and two NGOs.

Bobby Irven (B): Karin, before we dive into the how, who, and why of this project, as someone who has more than two decades of experience working in the social protection sector, what is one of the most surprising/significant changes you have seen as of late?

Karin Schelzig (K): It’s great to see how social protection has become much more of a development priority over the years, especially in the Asia Pacific region. In the early days there seemed to be a lot of reluctance, or skepticism, when it came to investing in social assistance, and especially in cash transfers. We’ve come a long way since then, thanks to all the empirical evidence that shows cash transfers work! We know that poor people spend the money wisely, that they invest in human capital, and that cash transfers don’t actually make people lazy. It was heartening to see that in the global response to COVID-19, almost every country very quickly introduced social protection measures, and the majority of those measures involved cash transfers.

B: Can you start off by telling us a little bit about how the Graduation pilot in the Philippines came about?

K: ADB’s partnership and policy dialogue with the Philippines in developing targeted poverty reduction and social protection solutions is decades-old, and ADB has become a long-standing and trusted partner. Over the last dozen or so years, we’ve provided several rounds of strategic financing and technical assistance for the country’s national conditional cash transfer program that aims to keep poor kids healthy and in school. By the middle of the last decade the cash transfer program had grown to reach about 4.5 million families, and it had been highly effective, but poverty rates in the country stayed stubbornly high and remained a major challenge.

Against this backdrop, in 2015, we introduced the idea of testing the Graduation approach by building on the cash transfer program to address multidimensional poverty, diversify household income sources, and build resilience to shocks. We wanted to add a rigorous research element to try to unravel whether group-based coaching and assets could bring program costs down without reducing the impact, as compared to individual coaching and assets. The policy dialogue and consensus building around the pilot and the impact evaluation continued through 2016 and 2017, and the pilot was eventually implemented from June 2018 to September 2020.

B: The Graduation pilot was, even by industry standards, a highly collaborative effort. Who were the different partners, and how did you all work together to make it such a success?

K: Broadly speaking there were six partners:

Implementation was led through the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and the administrative systems established for their Kabuhayan (livelihood) program, which provides households with productive assets and technical training.

Second, since the pilot worked with 2,400 poor beneficiaries of the cash transfer program – managed by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), they were also a key partner and early on expressed interest in scaling up Graduation through their own sustainable livelihood program.

The third group of stakeholders were local government officials. The pilot participants were in 5 municipalities and 29 villages (or barangays), and close collaboration with local officials was of course essential to get anything done, and to sustaining the results.

The fourth partner was ADB, but behind the scenes, internally, there were actually several different groups involved. Our team mobilized bits and pieces of grant funding from wherever we could find it, from different divisions working on innovation, civil society participation, social protection, and economic research and impact evaluation. This required internal coordination with – and reporting to – several different departments.

Fifth was the BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative, engaged by ADB to provide technical assistance, refine the pilot design, and run the day-to-day field implementation, including training and managing the program coaches

And finally, to underpin the pilot with a rigorous research agenda, we engaged Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) to design and carry out a randomized control trial impact evaluation so we would have solid evidence to share.

B: Lastly, while it may seem obvious to us, why, in your experience, are partnerships so important for this type of work, especially during times of upheaval like we’ve experienced during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis?

K: Simply put, different partners bring unique strengths to the table. In this case, each partner supported the pilot in different ways, from developing the approach and building consensus, to keeping it all going when things got a little rocky during implementation.

For example, when things stalled a bit after a change in leadership and changing priorities in our original implementing agency, IPA drew on their local relationships to help us anchor the pilot in the DOLE Institute for Labor Studies. This would never have happened without them.

Then, midway through the pilot, COVID hit. Just like almost everywhere, the impact in the Philippines was severe, with a loss of jobs and income and a rise in risky coping behaviors. Local lockdowns required quick thinking on how to adapt, and BRAC was able to respond by bringing extensive field experience and innovative approaches to bear – for example using the digital monitoring they introduced before the pandemic for quick data review to identify the households who were most vulnerable, helping them access extra support from our local government partners. BRAC was also quick to transition to a no-contact yet high-interaction digital outreach format since families were already used to frequent contact with their coaches.

When the pilot ended in September 2020, IPA adapted the research plan to do a rapid phone survey. The survey confirmed that households had of course suffered setbacks, but it turned out that the households in the graduation pilot, no matter which treatment arm they were in, fared significantly better than those in the control group, and across a range of dimensions – including financial security, food security, and mental health. These results are super promising, and no doubt a result of the strong partnerships that underpinned the work all along the way.

My colleague Amir Jilani and I wrote up the findings and evidence in a policy brief that is available online. The full-scale impact evaluation report will be available soon, looking at what happened two years after the interventions.

In exciting news, the Graduation approach is now being scaled up both at ADB, with a growing community of practice and new initiatives in several countries, and in the Philippines, where it is well on its way to becoming an integral part of the DSWD Sustainable Livelihoods Program. And a new partnership with the Australian Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade has brought both grant financing and vast technical experience in productive inclusion efforts. We’re looking forward to being able to report more positive results!

Read more expert insights: Responding to New Threats to Poverty Eradication in Asia

The How, Who, and Why of Partnerships for Poverty Reduction: A Conversation with Karin Schelzig (ADB)

DHAKA, Bangladesh, Feb 14 2022 (IPS) – With consistent, robust economic growth, countries across Asia have made monumental strides in eradicating extreme poverty over the past 30 years. In Bangladesh, for example, the population living in extreme poverty dropped from 43% in 1991 to 10.5% in 2019. Similarly in Cambodia, poverty incidence fell from 53% in 2004 to below 10% by 2016.

In these countries, economic growth has enabled governments to develop new social protection programs, expand existing ones, and make substantial investments in human capital, leading to a more equitable distribution of wealth and enabling inclusive economic growth.

However, extreme poverty persists, and progress on poverty eradication has been fragile. Many people remain highly vulnerable to income shocks and threats to their livelihood, facing the risk of falling back into poverty. Social protection systems might not efficiently address the needs of the people who are poorest because of policy designs that lead to insufficient provision of safety nets, or because they fail to identify or reach the populations they aim to serve.

New threats to livelihoods from climate change and global pandemics are adding to these policy challenges. Asian policymakers must actively address the need for effective social safety nets not only to protect their economically vulnerable populations, but also to safeguard their countries’ future economic prospects and growth.

To achieve durable gains in poverty eradication, policies need to be ambitious and creative, and efforts need to be sustained, supported by strong political will. Policymakers must adopt a long-term perspective to resilience building, and embed flexibility to respond to emergencies and new threats to livelihoods. And policies must be informed by empirical evidence on what works in the local context.

We need an in-depth understanding of what works for sustained eradication of extreme poverty in Asia, focusing on interventions that governments can implement at scale. We can gain useful insights on such interventions by bringing two streams of knowledge together: evidence from formal research and lessons from practical experiences. Social and economic inclusion interventions like BRAC’s Graduation approach, founded 20 years ago, have developed and evolved by bringing together both forms of knowledge on extreme poverty alleviation, reaching more than 2.1 million households in Bangladesh alone. This approach has combined findings from academic research with reasoned intuition and practice-based knowledge to evolve, adapt, and deliver sustained impact.

Adapted to the local context, Graduation is a multifaceted set of interventions designed to address the complex nature of extreme poverty. The approach generally includes meeting participants’ basic needs, providing training and assets for income generation, financial literacy training and savings support, and social empowerment through community engagement and life skills training—all facilitated through in-person coaching.

Over the past two decades, researchers have gained four key insights from this approach’s success, which policymakers can apply to strengthen efforts to alleviate extreme poverty:

First, some people in extreme poverty need a “big push” to break out of the poverty trap and stay out of this trap long after the program stops. Often, a combination of factors and constraints prevents people from escaping extreme poverty and durably improving their livelihood, a growing body of research suggests. A “big push”, or transfer of both assets and skills large enough for people to cross such thresholds, is needed to unlock the trap and stay out of poverty, finds a 2020 LSE-BIGD study. The Graduation approach provides such a push. And 93% of program participants in Bangladesh see a continued increase in income, savings, and consumption and an improvement in self-esteem five years after completing the program. A 10-year study of Bandhan’s Graduation program participants in West Bengal also found sustained improvements in consumption, food security, income, and health outcomes.

Asian countries seeking durable program impact on extreme poverty should integrate these findings into their social protection strategies, ensuring that asset transfers are large enough and complemented with enough additional training and services to break the poverty trap and enable people to stay out of it for the long term.

Second, “multifaceted” interventions like the Graduation approach can address the multidimensional nature of extreme poverty. Extreme poverty is not only characterized by a lack of income but also often associated with poor health, social isolation and exclusion, a lack of education and professional skills, and low subjective wellbeing. Using learnings from the Graduation approach, governments and their partners can simultaneously tackle these other dimensions of poverty and lead to behavioral changes such as improved health, sanitation, and nutritional habits. Doing so will generate synergy across different program components and amplify their impacts on livelihood.

While cash transfers can play a crucial role in meeting basic needs, as we have seen during COVID-19, evidence suggests that a more holistic approach—combining cash and other services, as the Graduation approach does—can also produce longer-lasting impacts on economic and social inclusion. A meta-analysis by CGAP and IPA, comparing 48 cash, livelihoods, and Graduation programs, found that programs that provided only cash or only livelihoods training combined with assets showed declining effects two years after the intervention. Meanwhile, Graduation interventions which combined coaching, financial and skills training, productive assets, and support for basic needs showed continued improvements in productivity and assets two years after completion.

Third, anti-poverty programs and policies need adaptive resilience-building components based on practical knowledge to prevent people from falling back into poverty. By incorporating a resilience component into programs aimed at reducing extreme poverty, Asian countries can prevent possible undoing of progress that can result from sudden economic, climate, or health shocks.

At the outbreak of the pandemic, BRAC rapidly adapted the Ultra-Poor Graduation (UPG) program, connecting program participants to emergency cash transfers, health information, and government services while adjusting to social distancing and health procedures, ultimately enabling 98% of them to avoid falling back into poverty. Insights from local staff on the livelihood, nutrition, and health challenges participants faced due to the pandemic enabled the program to respond appropriately to their constantly changing circumstances.

The Graduation approach also builds resilience by enabling people to move away from casual labor to diversified sources of income, in many cases from self-employment or salaried work. As a result, even after 13 years, participants who escaped the poverty trap through Graduation had more productive jobs and were less likely to lose them during the pandemic, according to a 2021 study by BIGD and LSE.

Fourth, Graduation interventions have the potential to stimulate the participant’s local economy, and if, scaled up, result in wider economic growth impacts. In Cambodia, LSE and UNDP conducted two studies on the potential impacts of the Graduation approach when integrated into the National Social Protection Strategy. A general equilibrium approach was developed to identify and trace the direct and indirect impacts on the local economy, on non-participants, and on wider economic growth. The study indicates that, through their effects on productivity, markets, and trade, Graduation interventions can simultaneously stimulate supply and demand, creating local synergies and multiplier effects that foster inclusive growth processes.

At the same level of public spending, the LSE-UNDP studies identify multiple benefits of Graduation packages relative to conventional safety net programs. Through human and physical capital accumulation, they allow participants to cover their basic needs and simultaneously engage in productive activities, generate income from self-employment, and participate in their local economy. Findings also show that both poverty and economic growth impacts are likely to last beyond the program implementation period, as the catalytic effects of productive assets and professional skills persist after programs have ended; these effects are over and above the impact of a cash-only transfer.

When developing poverty eradication interventions, governments in Asia can achieve greater long-term program impacts if they build on lessons learned from intensive practice and rigorous research. As Asian countries seek to recover from COVID-19 and build long-term resilience to future shocks, they should consider holistic interventions like the Graduation approach as investments with significant and durable returns for people who are economically vulnerable, enabling them to engage in productive activities.

Conventional safety nets will be always necessary. But, simultaneously, approaches like Graduation should be considered valuable tools to complement them and deliver sustainable impact at scale for people in extreme poverty.

Dr. Imran Matin is the Executive Director of BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD), a research and post graduate education institute at BRAC University focusing on generating high quality evidence and insights based on field research on governance and development challenges and interventions.

Stephanie Levy is a Guest Lecturer at the London School of Economics with over 15 years of experience in development and poverty reduction policies in Africa and South-East Asia and a specific focus on the local economic impact of social protection, including cash transfers and graduation packages.

Responding to New Threats to Poverty Eradication in Asia – IPS News

We’ve entered 2022 with some promising news – at the close of last year, the World Bank announced a $93 billion replenishment package of the International Development Association (IDA) to help low-income countries respond to the COVID-19 crisis and build a greener, more resilient, and inclusive future.

The financing package is the largest ever mobilization in IDA’s 61-year history. Funds will be dispersed to the world’s 74 poorest countries under the 20th replenishment (IDA20) program, which focuses on helping countries recover from the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis. In these countries, the ongoing pandemic is worsening poverty, undermining growth, and jeopardizing the prospects of resilient and inclusive development.

Civil society and practitioners played a critical role in pushing IDA 20 negotiations to address these challenges head on, by centering those hardest hit by existing and COVID-related inequalities in funding and programming. The Leadership Collaborative to End Ultra-Poverty, a group of economic inclusion programming practitioners and academics including BRAC, joined 21 other organizations to submit recommendations based on deep experience working directly with communities in extreme poverty. Chief among our recommendations was the need to ensure the poorest people would not be inadvertently excluded from well-meaning measures that nevertheless fail to properly reach and address their multidimensional needs. Across commitments to invest in human capital, economic inclusion programming for women, and building adaptive social protection programs, we pushed the Bank to be more ambitious and rigorous in its approach to include people in need.

In response, IDA Deputies agreed to modify language of the existing policy commitment for scaling up adaptive safety nets to ensure priority coverage for the poorest and most vulnerable people. More ambitious revisions to the social safety nets program also mean support is now expected to reach as many as 375 million people. This will have significant impacts for how social safety net programs are scaled in more than 20 IDA countries, and will support the inclusion of people in extreme poverty who are so often unable to access the services intended for their use.

However, much more remains to be done in support of COVID recovery and spurring the international community towards greater action for the poorest people. While extreme poverty spikes are expected to gradually return to 2018 levels throughout this year as wealthier countries’ economies recover from the economic impact of COVID-19, these projections still mean four years of lost progress on poverty eradication. There will still be nearly 700 million people living in extreme poverty, many of whom live outside of IDA countries, who will likely be excluded by current programs unless the international community acts swiftly and commits significantly more resources to reach and meet the long-term needs of people who are furthest behind. In addition to a $78 billion annual funding gap for social protection programs that have proven critical for keeping people from falling back into extreme poverty during the pandemic, it is clear we cannot simply rely on just one ambitious IDA package to solve the many problems that face people living in extreme poverty.

For more on The Leadership Collaborative to End Ultra-Poverty’s proposals for IDA20, read Global leaders are funding a historic COVID response for the world’s poorest countries, but will it reach those who need it most?

Other resources:
IDA Factsheet, President’s Remarks, and 10 Things You Should Know About IDA.

IDA20 Package Adopts a More Robust Response for the World’s Poorest People

After a drastic rise in extreme poverty due to COVID-19, experts say it is now on the decline. The World Bank estimates that in the past two years, almost 100 million more people were forced into extreme poverty as a result of the pandemic, peaking at over 730 million people in 2020. By the end of 2022, the World Data Lab’s World Poverty Clock, a tool which includes World Bank and IMF data, predicts approximately 690 million people will be living in extreme poverty – just slightly above 2018 levels.

More people are escaping extreme poverty than falling into it, which is undeniably a good thing. However, returning to 2018 levels of extreme poverty in the next year means four years of lost progress on poverty eradication. It means 700 million people will still be facing the multiple deprivations of extreme poverty including limited access to food, healthcare, clean drinking water, and education, in addition to income. It means we are still leaving 700 million people behind.

While many high-income countries are recovering some of the losses incurred by the pandemic, economic recovery will be comparatively slow for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), according to IMF data. In addition to the prolonged economic effects of COVID-19, many LMICs face intersecting challenges to poverty reduction that exacerbate the situation, including limited fiscal space, gender inequality, and the impacts of climate change.

The people newly pushed into extreme poverty by the pandemic tend to differ demographically from the larger group of those already living in extreme poverty, requiring different approaches to meet their multidimensional needs. They are mostly people who were just above the extreme poverty threshold before the pandemic, concentrated in middle-income countries. In comparison to people living in extreme poverty before the pandemic, they tend to be more educated, own slightly more assets, are more likely to work as paid employees, and more likely to live in urban settings with better access to infrastructure. In Bangladesh, BRAC’s Ultra-Poor Graduation program is tailoring its interventions to their specific challenges and opportunities to escape the poverty trap.

Without a similarly tailored, multifaceted approach adapted to their needs, the population of people in the deepest states of poverty before the pandemic will remain trapped, excluded from existing programs, and may face even greater challenges than they do today. Women in extreme poverty are particularly marginalized, often lacking legal rights, social empowerment, and access to health care and education while being far more likely to perform unpaid or underpaid work, including care work. They will also bear the brunt of worsening climate shocks, with climate change pushing up to 132 million people into extreme poverty despite any economic recovery we may see from COVID.

To enable the people who have been left furthest behind to escape the poverty trap, we first need to identify them. In BRAC UPGI’s experience, programs can find households in the most severe states of poverty through a multi-step process tailored to local data, needs, and capacity. By engaging local leaders and communities, applying a gender lens, and incorporating existing government data, we have found anti-poverty interventions can more effectively include the people who are most marginalized.

We then need to design new or adapt existing policies and programs to meet their long-term needs, applying evidence-based interventions proven to have sustainable impacts on poverty eradication and other issues that are inextricably linked to poverty like gender inequality, malnutrition, and lack of child education. Since it was founded in 2002, BRAC’s Graduation approach has enabled over two million households in Bangladesh to develop sustainable livelihoods and create a pathway out of extreme poverty.

A study from the London School of Economics (LSE) found that seven years after entering BRAC’s Graduation program in Bangladesh, 93 percent of participants maintained or increased their income, assets, and consumption. A more recent study from LSE and the BRAC Institute of Governance & Development (BIGD) found that participants who began the Graduation program 13 years prior and escaped the poverty trap were more likely to have salaried jobs or be self-employed instead of relying on casual labor, giving them greater job security despite the impacts of the pandemic. BRAC aims to build off the success of the Graduation program in Bangladesh by scaling the Graduation approach worldwide, enabling millions more to escape extreme poverty.

Programs like Graduation that are proven to reach those left behind and empower them to create a pathway toward self-sufficiency are a necessary tool for ending extreme poverty. It is a common belief that economic growth is the greatest driver of poverty reduction. But structural inequalities mean growth does not affect everyone equally. People who are deeply socially and economically marginalized, such as those living in extreme poverty, may receive little to no benefit from broader macroeconomic growth. In fact, if global inequality were to decrease by two percentage points a year, 860 million fewer people would be living on under $5.50 a day by 2030.

We can change the status quo of poverty alleviation to empower millions more people to escape extreme poverty. However, we need to acknowledge that doing so will require more than economic growth alone. It will also require reaching people who lack the resources and tools to escape the poverty trap without sufficient support. The longer we delay poverty eradication efforts, the further entrenched in extreme poverty this group will be. They will also be increasingly concentrated in middle-income countries, fragile and conflict-affected states, and urban areas in Africa and Asia.

Due to interruptions in poverty reduction and long-term economic stagnation caused by COVID-19, nearly 600 million people could still be living in extreme poverty by 2030, an increase of 50 million people compared to pre-pandemic estimates. On our current trajectory, that means the world will fail to achieve UN Sustainable Development Goal 1, ending poverty in all its forms everywhere.

As bleak as the landscape of global poverty appears, this is not an intractable issue. The international community, with governments at the helm, can change our current trajectory through action.

We have the evidence needed to design new and enhance existing programs to reach and meet the long-term needs of people in extreme poverty. Governments are well-positioned to drive policy and programmatic change needed to have a sustained impact on eradicating extreme poverty, and they have the ability to reach millions more people through national programs. But they need more resources and support to do so effectively. International partners can strengthen government capacity and enable them to create the fiscal space needed to adequately fund anti-poverty efforts, whether through debt relief, support mobilizing domestic resources, international aid, or innovative financing mechanisms.

By partnering with multilateral institutions, researchers, NGOs, and civil society, governments can move us away from a future where hundreds of millions of people remain trapped in extreme poverty toward a future where everyone has the opportunity to realize their potential.

Extreme Poverty Levels Are Falling, But We Are Leaving Nearly 700 Million People Behind

By Shameran Abed | Executive Director, BRAC International; Joanne Carter | Executive Director, RESULTS; and Barbara Jackson |  Vice President: Programs, TrickleUp 

Far from the limelight, global leaders are on the cusp of striking a historic and unprecedented financing deal for spurring pandemic recovery through the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA), a mechanism overseen by 173 governments that aims to reduce poverty by providing low-interest loans and grants for programs that boost economic growth, reduce inequalities, and improve people’s living conditions. A whopping $90-100 billion is on the IDA negotiating table in 2021 to help the world’s poorest countries rebuild from the pandemic over the next three years.

Current negotiations around how this money is spent have critical implications for our global landscape – determining not only which strategies will be pursued to support our recovery, but also whether global problems like extreme poverty will inadvertently be allowed to grow dramatically and become further entrenched for decades to come. It should be of great concern to all of us that government funding for IDA is spent as effectively as possible on the key pressing problems that threaten global progress and growth far beyond the COVID-19 crisis. We need urgent and strategic action as the World Bank estimates that nearly 100 million more people are falling into the deepest states of poverty following pandemic-induced economic shocks.

The expansion of economic inclusion programs can make a tremendous impact on extreme poverty worldwide. To date they have enabled millions of people around the world to escape cycles of extreme poverty long term. These interventions focus on empowering people who have been socially and economically excluded to build sustainable livelihoods and often involve providing support for their basic needs alongside asset transfers, skills training, and ongoing coaching. 

The evidence base for these programs is broad and growing; research from the London School of Economics found 93% of participants in BRAC’s Ultra-Poor Graduation program in Bangladesh have seen a continued increase in income, savings, consumption, and self-esteem for years after program interventions ended. According to the World Bank, these interventions have been a tool of choice for governments in the pandemic, with 219 programs now reaching nearly 92 million people across 75 countries.

Civil society members with deep experience working with people in the most severe states of poverty are calling for additions to current funding proposals to ensure they aren’t left behind. In a letter to officials from the +50 donor governments to IDA this September, and in subsequent engagement activities, 35 organizations and allies affiliated with the Leadership Collaborative to End Ultra-Poverty, a group of Northern and Southern NGOs, researchers, and practitioners dedicated to reaching Sustainable Development Goal 1, or ending all forms of poverty, through economic inclusion programs, outlined concrete proposals to ensure commitments address the most severe forms of poverty.

The proposals hinge on our experience and rigorous research that without specifically-dedicated efforts, funds will fail to reach those below the World Bank’s extreme poverty line of $1.90/day who experience multidimensional, structural vulnerabilities. Already, the World Bank has accepted that IDA programs supporting expansion of adaptive social protection and building resilience to shocks must intentionally prioritize and include targeting mechanisms to reach those deeper in poverty to more fully accelerate upward social and economic mobility. However, the latest draft of the IDA package lacks concrete targets and indicators for reaching this critical population. 

There is an opportunity to directly include a focus on people living in extreme poverty in the system used to measure the impacts of IDA funding, fostering greater accountability for the goals of reaching those living in extreme poverty. Current systems for distributing support to the world’s poorest, through which IDA funds would flow, have considerable leakage that weakens their impact. The World Bank Aspire database indicates that between 25% to 60% of cash transfer and social assistance payments went to people in the upper three poverty quintiles in 2018 in Africa, largely missing the people who were poorest. To avoid repeating history, when reporting on safety net coverage, IDA needs to both measure and report on the flow of funding to the lowest poverty quintile.

Finally, the proposed target numbers of people in poverty reached by the plan can be more ambitious and specific to reaching people experiencing extreme poverty. Given the projected growth of the numbers of people living in poverty due to the combined factors of COVID-19, climate change and demographic growth, we recommend a substantial increase in IDA targets. The previous 2019 IDA funding package set a target for 30-40 million people reached by safety nets in all quintiles of poverty. We believe that the IDA 20 package should go beyond this, aiming to reach at least 44-54 million people (accounting for demographic growth and excluding COVID-19 temporary coverage), for all quintiles, with the majority of these being people in extreme poverty. The newly released IDA draft is encouraging in that it sets a minimum level of 75 million people reached, but unfortunately this number includes the numerous recipients of temporary pandemic benefits and lacks a focus on people in the lowest quintiles.

If accepted, these changes could go a long way to facilitating the inclusion of more people who struggle daily to make ends meet. Given the staggering numbers of people who have fallen into extreme poverty as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the intentional inclusion of people living in extreme poverty in programs is critical to ensuring a resilient and equitable economic recovery.

IDA financing will be an unprecedented moment of collective action from donor governments at a time of high deficits and strong competition for scarce resources. To build support and fully meet this moment of crisis, a “business as usual” approach will not work. We must be able to demonstrate clear efforts to effectively reach those who are most marginalized.

OPINION: Global leaders are funding a historic COVID response for the world’s poorest countries, but will it reach those who need it most?

The international community cannot work in silos and expect to end extreme poverty. Poverty is multidimensional.The most effective and powerful interventions that empower people to escape the poverty trap address the lives of people living in poverty holistically. A truly holistic approach leverages stakeholders from all parts of society collaborating to uplift people from the most marginalized communities. This is a matter of social justice, not of charity.

And, this is urgent. By the end of 2021, COVID-19 will have forced approximately 150 million more people into extreme poverty. Despite dire circumstances, we can still make meaningful progress on poverty eradication. Before the pandemic struck, global extreme poverty was consistently falling. From 2011 to 2019 alone, it fell from 1.1 billion people to 691 million.

Social protection systems designed to meet the needs of people living in extreme poverty were key to this progress. World Bank research shows 36 percent of the global reduction in extreme poverty has been due to social protection programs, and a recent study found that one percent of GDP invested in social protection can lead to a seven percent decline in national poverty rates. Coordinated international action to serve people from marginalized communities through social protection has also been essential to preventing even worse impacts from COVID-19. In 2020, countries launched over 1400 programs and invested over $800 billion USD as a social protection response to the pandemic. One study estimates that income support programs alone prevented over 3 million more COVID-19 cases and over 165,000 additional deaths worldwide.

These lifesaving, transformational programs are often government-led, but ultimately multisectoral efforts that bring together governments, multilaterals, civil society, the private sector, and academia to maximize impact. Looking to the future, we need to drive systems change for progress on poverty alleviation through collaboration. BRAC UPGI’s experiences adapting the Graduation approach with diverse partners in varied contexts, from urban slums in Tamil Nadu, India to pastoralists in rural areas of Kitui County, Kenya, demonstrate that adapting programs and policies strengthens impact and makes systems more resilient, adaptive, and inclusive. And we see this demonstrated even during a global pandemic.

In the Philippines, a successful government-led Graduation program leverages financing from a multilateral development bank, technical expertise from an NGO, and market linkages to the private sector. The Philippines Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) Graduation pilot program received funding from the Asian Development Bank. BRAC UPGI used knowledge of Graduation program design and implementation to adapt the program to the challenges posed by COVID-19 lockdowns last year. By connecting participants to existing government services, the Graduation program made the social protection system more inclusive, lowered costs, and ensured 96 percent of participants received cash from the national government. This social assistance came as livelihoods were disrupted by the pandemic, making this integration with other government programming all the more critical.

We developed partnership agreements with local vendors to give program participants access to the productive assets, training, and support needed for livestock-based livelihoods like poultry and swine fattening. Our private sector partners offered livelihoods training, additional vitamins and medicines for livestock, and veterinary services. During the pandemic, two-thirds of participants continued developing their livelihoods and 76 percent continued earning incomes even during lockdowns.

BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation (UPG) program in Bangladesh offers another model of how multi- stakeholder collaboration varies for the greatest impact based on local context. BRAC itself implements the Bangladesh UPG program and funds it in part through its own social enterprises. It has achieved success at scale, empowering over 2.1 million households to escape the poverty trap since 2002. BRAC’s direct implementation also guides its innovations to adapt the Graduation approach to serve diverse contexts and communities, such as people with disabilities, urban and newly poor populations, and refugee host communities, as well as its program adaptations for climate change. As we have seen during the COVID-19 crisis, the UPG program enables participants to access essential government services and connects them to community services through community mobilisation so they can meet their basic needs. Building on existing government and community programs makes the Graduation approach more effective and makes these programs more inclusive of people in extreme poverty.

Sufia, a UPG program participant, had her livelihood disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. Her home was severely damaged by Cyclone Amphan in May 2020. BRAC staff provided Sufia and her family training on virus prevention strategies, and connected them to both community and government relief services that provided food and hygiene supplies as well as a food stipend and assistance to repair their home. Within a short period of time, she was able to repair her home and restore her livelihood. Her story teaches us that by using the funds at scale generated by social enterprise, the implementation experience of the world’s largest NGO, and the social protection and aid provided by government and civil society actors, we can empower people impacted by climate, health, and economic shocks to escape extreme poverty and transform their lives.

Multisectoral partnerships to end extreme poverty demand collaboration between researchers, designers, and implementers of transformative programs as well. To successfully bring anti-poverty interventions to scale through governments, we need to design them to be as effective as possible, and we need evidence they work in a variety of contexts. BRAC has been fortunate enough to work with both the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab and Innovations for Poverty Action to rigorously test, evaluate, and analyze Graduation program outcomes. Through these research partnerships and our internal evaluations, BRAC has gained valuable insights we’ve used to continuously improve and iterate on the Graduation approach, refining it to better meet the needs of people in extreme poverty in more than 14 countries around the world.

BRAC knows that collaborating with government, multilateral, private sector, research, and civil society partners makes anti-poverty programming more effective at scale. When the international community and local partners collaborate, we can amplify the impacts of an intervention with the potential to enable millions of people to escape extreme poverty long-term. We need more of this way of working to end extreme poverty.

Why We Need a Multisectoral Approach to End Extreme Poverty

Head of Policy and Partnerships

The Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative (UPGI) is a global program of BRAC founded in 2016 to support the expansion and implementation of the Graduation approach. BRAC UPGI is scaling the Graduation approach through programming and policies, and partnering with national governments, peer organizations, civil society actors, and donors to achieve the long-term benefits demonstrated by Graduation and help millions more lift themselves from extreme poverty.

BRAC joined with partner groups to write this letter to the World Bank, calling for the Evolution Roadmap to explicitly endorse evidence-based interventions for eradicating extreme poverty to accelerate adoption of proven approaches like Graduation/economic inclusion.

WB-Evolution-Roadmap-Letter-Leadership-Collaborative-4-1.pdf

World Bank Evolution Roadmap Letter - Leadership Collective

The undersigned are members of the NGO Collaborative and its partners and allies, a group of NGOs, researchers, and practitioners dedicated to reaching SDG 1 through economic inclusion programs that help the poorest increase assets and income. Members have regularly engaged with the Partnership for Economic Inclusion (PEI) housed at the World Bank to support robust knowledge exchange, expand awareness of best practices, and contribute to the growing evidence base for social and economic inclusion programs. 

Economic inclusion programs help boost the income and assets of the world’s poorest individuals and households with a “big push” of coordinated interventions – usually a combination of cash or in-kind transfers, skills training or coaching, access to finance, and links to market support.

BRAC

Contacts

Rasha Natour