Working with the Ultra-Poor: Learning From BRAC Experiences
Author(s)
Halder, Shantana R.
Abstract
This paper describes BRAC experiences of working with the ultra-poor over the last two decades. The BRAC Income Generation for Vulnerable Group Development (IGVGD) scheme was devised in 1986, and arose from the coming together of three circumstances: (i) an awareness that ‘leaving everything to the community’ would not deal with the problem of marginalisation of the ultra-poor within the community; (ii) an offer in that year of food aid from the UN World Food Programme, which offered the potential of overcoming the ultra-poor’s ‘fear of cash’ and (iii) a decision by BRAC to use a combination of food aid, savings and training in activities with low capital requirements as a means of enabling the marginalized to climb the ladder out of ultra-poverty. One interesting finding is that whereas, in the lower-middle reaches of financial markets at which microfinance typically operates, quantitative approaches yield more optimistic findings (for women borrowers’ welfare) than qualitative, for the ultra-poor it is the other way around; many IGVGD borrowers, at least, experienced few changes in income, but important improvements in autonomy and social status.
