The poorest, chronically food insecure households, with irregular incomes and little or no assets are often excluded from development interventions including microcredit. When they do receive assistance they are rarely able to improve their conditions enough to maintain long-term sustainable livelihoods.
Through years of work on poverty alleviation BRAC (the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee) has developed an extremely successful ‘graduation model’. BRAC’s Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction – Targeting the Ultra Poor (CFPR-TUP) programme targets the poorest. It combines support for immediate consumption with an asset grant to kick start an economic activity and provides skills training, basic health care assistance and access to financial services.
The model gives recipients a 24-month period to develop sustainable livelihoods and ‘graduate’ out of extreme poverty. This paper presents the BRAC programme as a major innovation in our understanding of extreme poverty. The authors also show how the process of ‘graduation’ is fraught with challenges, and how many would always require state level support.
- Report summary: CSP Research Report Summary 10
- Related publication: Social Protection in Asia: Research findings and policy lessons
