4 steps to ending extreme poverty Shameran Abed
We are witness to monumental
human progress.
Over the past few decades,
the expansion of the global marketplace
has lifted a third of the world’s
population out of extreme poverty.
Yet we are also witness
to an astounding failure.
Our efforts to lift people up
have left behind those
in the harshest forms of poverty,
the ultra-poor.
What it means to be ultra-poor
goes beyond the monetary definition
that we’re all familiar with:
living on less than two dollars a day.
It goes even beyond not having assets
like livestock or land.
To be ultra-poor means
to be stripped of your dignity,
purpose and self-worth.
It means living in isolation,
because you’re a burden
to your own community.
It means being unable
to imagine a better future
for yourself and your family.
By the end of 2019,
about 400 million people
were living in ultra-poverty worldwide.
That’s more than the populations
of the United States and Canada combined.
And when calamity strikes,
whether it’s a pandemic,
a natural disaster or a manmade crisis,
these numbers spike astronomically higher.
My father, Fazle Abed,
gave up a corporate career
to establish BRAC
here in Bangladesh in 1972.
Bangladesh was a wreck,
having just gone through
a devastating cyclone
followed by a brutal war for independence.
Working with the poorest of the poor,
my father realized
that poverty was more
than the lack of income and assets.
It was also a lack of hope.
People were trapped in poverty,
because they felt
their condition was immutable.
Poverty, to them,
was like the sun and the moon –
something given to them by God.
For poverty reduction programs to succeed,
they would need to instill
hope and self-worth
so that, with a little support,
people could lift themselves
out of poverty.
BRAC went on to pioneer
the graduation approach,
a solution to ultra-poverty
that addresses both income poverty
and the poverty of hope.
The approach works primarily with women,
because women are
the most affected by ultra-poverty
but also the ones most likely
to pull themselves and their families
out of it.
Over a two-year period,
we essentially do four things.
One, we meet a woman’s basic needs
by giving her food or cash,
ensuring the minimum to survive.
Two, we move her
towards a decent livelihood
by giving her an asset, like livestock,
and training her to earn money from it.
Three, we train her to save, budget
and invest her new wealth.
And four, we help
to integrate her socially,
first into groups of women like her
and then into her community.
Each of these elements
is key to the success of the others,
but the real magic is the hope
and sense of possibility
the women develop through
the close mentorship they receive.
Let me tell you about Jorina.
Jorina was born in a remote village
in northern Bangladesh.
She never went to school,
and at the age of 15,
she was married off to an abusive husband.
He eventually abandoned her,
leaving her with no income
and two children who were not in school
and were severely malnourished.
With no one to turn to for help,
she had no hope.
Jorina joined BRAC’s
Graduation program in 2005.
She received a dollar a week,
two cows,
enterprise training
and a weekly visit from a mentor.
She began to build her assets,
but most importantly,
she began to imagine a better future
for herself and her children.
If you were visit Jorina’s village today,
you would find that she runs
the largest general store in her area.
She will proudly show you
the land she bought
and the house she built.
Since we began this program in 2002,
two million Bangladeshi women
have lifted themselves and their families
out of ultra-poverty.
That’s almost nine million people.
The program, which costs
500 dollars per household,
runs for only two years,
but the impact goes well beyond that.
Researchers at the London
School of Economics found
that even seven years
after entering the program,
92 percent of participants
had maintained or increased
their income, assets and consumption.
Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee,
the MIT economists who won
the Nobel Prize last year,
led multicountry evaluations
that identified graduation
as one of the most effective ways
to break the poverty trap.
But my father wasn’t content
to have found a solution
that worked for some people.
He always wanted to know
whether we were being ambitious enough
in terms of scale.
So when we achieved
nationwide scale in Bangladesh,
he wanted to know
how we could scale it globally.
And that has to involve governments.
Governments already dedicate
billions of dollars
on poverty reduction programs.
But so much of that money is wasted,
because these programs
either don’t reach the poorest,
and even the ones that do
fail to have significant long-term impact.
We are working to engage governments
to help them to adopt and scale
graduation programs themselves,
maximizing the impact
of the billions of dollars
they already allocate
to fight ultra-poverty.
Our plan is to help
another 21 million people
lift themselves out of ultra-poverty
in eight countries over the next six years
with BRAC teams on-site
and embedded in each country.
In July of 2019, my father was diagnosed
with terminal brain cancer
and given four months to live.
As he transitioned out of BRAC after
leading the organization for 47 years,
he reminded us that throughout his life,
he saw optimism triumph over despair,
that when you light the spark
of self-belief in people,
even the poorest
can transform their lives.
My father passed away in December.
He lit that spark for millions of people,
and in the final days of his life,
he implored us to continue to do so
for millions more.
This opportunity is ours for the taking,
so let’s stop imagining
a world without ultra-poverty
and start building that world together.
Thank you.