Matching endowments and opportunities

Bangladesh is widely known as a country of microfinance institutions (MFIs) where thousands of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are spread over the country to provide various services, including microcredit, to the poor. The microfinance model of Bangladesh has been adapted in some countries. For example, BRAC - an internationally reputed Bangladeshi NGO - has moved beyond the Bangladesh boundary to serve the poor in other countries. BRAC is operating in Pakistan, Tanzania, Philippines, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, South Sudan, and Uganda.  
BRAC IN UGANDA: Take the case of Uganda, a landlocked country of East Africa where nearly 40 per cent of the people live on less than $1.25/day. Per capita GNI (gross national income) in that country is around US$ 550. Double the size of Bangladesh, the population density is only 142 per sq.km. Two-thirds of the employed labour force is employed in agriculture, and about 90 per cent of all rural women work in agriculture.
BRAC attacks poverty in Uganda, as elsewhere, from two angles: transferring assets to the poor households and imparting training to reap a better return from those assets. It has programmes such as agriculture, livestock and poultry, health, education, microfinance, adolescent programme, community connector programme, small enterprise programme and WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene). For example, within seven years, the core microfinance programme has expanded across the country with a disbursement of US$ 55 million to 129,104 borrowers as small loans. Over 50,000 girls are members of BRAC Adolescent Club spread over 51 districts where they meet and socialise with their peers. They use this platform to share and learn from each other, improve life skills knowledge and practice and up skill themselves on income-generating activities through livelihood training. This year, 600 young girls and boys from poor families were awarded scholarship to continue their education in top institutions.
Health is wealth - so goes the adage - but the poor everywhere are deprived of the access to health facilities.  Leveraging BRAC's microfinance platform the healthcare programme has already reached over 1.6 million people through services provided by 128 branches nationwide and about 3000 community health promoters. A recent impact evaluation shows that there has been 25 per cent reduction in under-five deaths due to BRAC's intervention only.
Nyawere Rehema is one such BRAC community health promoter (CHP). She received two weeks' training on causes and treatment of common illness and the use of basic medicines. She visits households to offer health services particularly focusing on antenatal and postnatal issues and refers complicated illness to health centres. She has set up a retail shop in her village and earns $80 per month from selling medicines. According to her, the number of infant and maternal deaths has been greatly reduced in her community and most of the mothers delivers in hospitals. What is more important to her is that her community has learnt to value health. It is difficult to find a child who has not been immunised in her locality.
Likewise, BRAC's livestock and poultry programme aims to promote improved practices and modern technologies amongst poultry and livestock farmers, improve productivity of their livestock, reduce mortality and provide them with a supply of good quality inputs, resulting in efficient management of small to medium farm enterprises. BRAC is working there within the framework of national development plan with focus on enhancing productivity, increasing market access and value addition, improving environment for agricultural and livestock sector and bringing institutional development.
Nakagola Ruth (36), a widow and a mother of three from the village Masaba Igenge in Iganga district, used to rear local birds using traditional farming practices with no hope of commercial endeavour. After joining BRAC-led poultry and livestock programme to become a volunteer community livestock promoter, she received training on basic husbandry practices and vaccination techniques. She sells her services in and around the village and earns $240 a month - almost double than in the past. She can afford to pay all tuition fees for three of her children. Meantime, Nakagolo has constructed another poultry house through the dividends obtained from her venture. Now the community considers her as an icon of hopes and success.
No less revealing is the case of Mary Loki who was forced to drop out from primary school. Second eldest of six children, Mary's mother serves as a cleaner in a nearby health unit with a petty payroll; the father is a Catholic catechist with no salary. In 2010 she received a 3-month training on tailoring from a technical institute. After the training, she came back home and waited for the sewing machine that BRAC promised to provide to set up a business enterprise.
From Bangladesh to Uganda and possibly everywhere, the condition of the poor and the prescriptions for their uplift are the same. Physical assets apart, the poor lack the capacity to generate income from whatever endowment they have. It is partly due to the lack of knowledge to utilise the assets, and partly due to the lack of information about opportunities. Second, training is a necessary but not sufficient condition to the uplift unless supported by  the windows of opportunities. Matching the windows of opportunities with endowments is the crucial point in the process of uplift. BRAC seems to have done the same with a view to enable the poor to eke out a better living - in Bangladesh and elsewhere.

Abdul Bayes is a Professor of economics at Jahnagirnagar University. [email protected]