January 28, 2010---a training seminar aimed at strengthening IPRCC’s capacity building was held in IPRCC’s meeting room. A presentation on BRAC was made by Dr. Salehuddin Ahmed, the CTA of IPRCC, on the following aspects:

1. A brief overview of Bangladesh including the country’s founding history, the economy and the people.;

2. Introduction on BRAC, which is one of the private development organizations in Bangladesh, In the 1970s, international NGOs were playing dominant roles in addressing poverty and development issues in Bangladesh. National NGOs now are the major entities alongwith the Government in providing support, delivering services and capacity building. Currently, BRAC is the largest NGO in the world, with 60,000 full time staff and having an annual budget of approximately 600 millions US Dollars, of which a little more than 25% are funded by international donors.

3. A short documentary video showed how the staff of BRAC developed its strategies and delivered services to the poor in the rural communities. In 1970s, BRAC started operation from the village level, and targeted at poor, mainly women and children.. BRAC’s poverty alleviation programs cover micro finance, education, health, social service, marketing, training, research and evaluation.

After the interactive exchange with participants, Dr. Salehuddin Ahmed summarized a series of factors that lead to BRAC’s success.

● Establishing its own principles in line with the spirit of independence
● Continued and dedicated leadership
●Understanding Poverty as a comprehensive problem, believing in people’s strength
●Listening to the staff and people
●Constantly innovating, implementing programs and promoting comprehensive development strategies
●Facilitating a sound management system, giving priority on capacity building and training
●Taking poverty alleviation professionally
●Developing a strong Finance and Audit system
●Putting emphasis on research and evaluation and utilizing its results
●Developing a Participatory management system
●Promoting a value-driven and people-centred organizational culture, having concerns for the poor, especially women and encouraging honesty, integrity, cost consciousness, attitude to listen and learn;
●Facilitating practical poverty alleviation approaches;
●Building strong infrastructure;
●Mobilizing and Utilizing financial and human resources;
●Diversifying and expanding the business area including university, industries and bank etc.
●Having extraordinary capacity of Scaling-up