at least 4 times sir fazle abed integrated another finanial service solution in his quest to change value chains in village, 200000 villages, nationally, globally, virtually
here is his description of an addition from 1999 which won the noble economics prize for academic revision of past theories in 2019 cf mit poverty lab
scale is about ambition if you are
00:20
ambitious then then I suppose in order
00:25
to meet your ambition you would go for scale
00:29
scale because you can do good
00:32
work in small community and be satisfied
00:37
with it but I was more ambitious I
00:40
wanted to change Bangladesh
00:43
also be done by small activities and
00:46
then having multiple actors
00:51
replicating it throughout the country
00:53
that can also be done but then you have
00:56
to find other people following you and
00:58
replicating your work as well and then
01:01
in the world ....
so that is one kind of
01:05
scale that has happened in Bangladesh through a series of leaps
xxxxx
01:08
for example in microfinance when we
01:13
started microfinance in 1980 microfinance is not
01:16
very well known and then in 1983
01:19
came Grameen Bank another organization
01:22
similar to us and they focused their
01:25
attention on just financial services and
01:27
nothing else at a nationwide level until 1996 and yunus the founder of
01:35
of global advocacy to try to
01:39
take back finance all over the world
01:41
so as a result what is happening is that
01:43
microfinance models have tested
01:46
almost every country's commitment to lives matter ...financial
01:48
services for the poor as one of the ways
01:51
of alleviating poverty so that was done
01:55
not by one single organization making it
01:59
really large program but multiple
02:02
organizations in many countries expanding
02:05
microfinance and having an impact on
02:13
we need to break the cycle of poverty
02:16
somewhere breaking the cycle of poverty
02:20
means that you commit to the next
02:22
generation of children if they get
02:25
better education better health... i
02:27
then they'll come out of poverty so we
02:31
are looking at providing quality
02:33
education to children we are looking at
02:38
providing better nutrition or nutrition
02:42
education to mothers so that their
02:44
children get better nutrition so the
02:47
next generation is healthier has better
02:50
education so poverty can ultimately be
02:53
reduced in societies so education
02:57
nutrition health opportu creating
03:01
opportunities by training people in
03:04
various kinds of skills so these are
03:07
important issues and we are concerned
03:16
... we were looking at what do
03:19
the poor people want from us to the need
03:22
better seeds to grow a better food or
03:27
hope or how could they could we improve
03:31
their productivity and we found that
03:34
many women who produce vegetables didn't
03:38
have an access to a good seed pocket
03:41
seed multiplication was not there and
03:43
they couldn't find good seeds in the
03:45
market so we went to the seed production
03:48
first of all vegetable seeds and then
03:54
rice seeds joint venture with
03:56
China with Australia to produce high
03:59
quality seeds upon whether she's poor
04:01
can have access to high-quality seeds
04:03
and that has also had an impact on
04:06
productivity or our agriculture over
04:08
time so these are important important
04:12
now next generation of enterprises which
04:18
could provide support to breath could be
04:23
in private education there are state
04:27
education in Bangladesh is very poor so
04:30
there are parents who are looking for
04:32
quality education for their children but
04:35
even lower middle class even even poorer
04:38
people now having to pay out for private
04:42
tuition private tutors to teach the
04:45
children in order to pass exams so if
04:48
they're ready to put in a five to ten
04:51
dollars a month could we provide instead
04:56
of free education could we provide a
04:59
quality primary education by charging
05:02
them ten dollars a month or fifteen
05:04
dollars a month could we provide that so
05:07
we are now looking at a possible
05:10
enterprise and quality education for
05:22
we have our budget is about a billion
05:26
dollars now 700 billion dollars come
05:29
from revenue come from all our
05:31
businesses and what 300 dollars comes
05:36
so what 70% is self-funded and 30% donor
05:51
well it hasn't impacted a great deal yet
05:54
but one you know when you talk about a
05:57
blogger being killed in Bangladesh means
06:01
that there is a lot of sort of
06:05
intolerance intolerant religion is
06:11
becoming quite a force in our society so
06:15
I just hope that we can keep it under
06:18
under control and still go on providing
06:22
improvement in the lives of women
06:23
because we've been helping have not had
06:27
a sort of picture cage will be strong in
06:30
Bangladesh and in Houla South Asia and
06:33
we need to do some more other find ways
06:36
of gender equality in our society for
06:41
our own good not not because we want to
06:45
be fair to women but for our own
06:47
societies code we need equality of men
xxxx
06:56
ending extreme poverty: it is possible to do it but you must leap forward serially when the time is right
06:59
that we have shown in brac in 1999 we
07:06
did a study of what was what what groups
07:09
of people in Bangladesh are not having
07:12
access to financial services we found
07:15
that the poorest 10% of the Bangladeshis
07:18
don't have access to financial
07:20
microfinance and then we found another
07:23
thing that there are a group of people
07:26
who are not poor but who are not rich
07:28
enough to go to a bank to start a small
07:30
business the small and medium
07:33
enterprises were not getting money from
07:34
banks nor where they've poor enough to
07:38
get money from buck from microfinance
07:40
organizations so they were missed out
07:41
they were the missing middle and they
07:44
were there are another group which are
07:46
very poor the poorest 10% who did didn't
07:50
have access to finance so we started a
07:52
program for the ultra poor we called it
07:55
so it's not just bike financial services
07:58
like giving those to people but giving
08:01
grants so we have got a program which is
08:03
which which is focused on the poorest
08:07
families they want five four million
08:10
families who are really poor and we are
08:13
we have now reached about 1.6 billion
08:16
families and there are four elements in
08:19
that program one is giving transfer an
08:23
asset not a loan but a grant we give
08:27
also a monthly stipend in order for them
08:29
to survive we give them healthcare for
08:32
the for the recipient family and we sent
08:36
their children to school and we hold
08:38
their hands and give them a coaching to
08:43
be able to manage resources so this
08:47
program goes on for two years and what
08:50
has been done is so after two years the
08:53
program they go out a program they go
08:56
into our bikes a finance program they
08:58
can borrow money then provide
08:59
program and then improve their
09:03
conditions then we found that over the
09:05
period of time in the last ten years we
09:09
have been doing this program the women
09:12
who who came as an ultra poor have
09:15
graduated from ultra poverty and the
09:18
government and continues to improve over
09:21
the whole period of time so this is one
09:23
program that we are now promoting
09:24
throughout the world which could be done
09:27
to get very poor people out of poverty
09:32
and it has been replicated in ten other
09:35
countries and all of them and they have
09:39
been also they have also done our cities
09:44
the randomized controlled trials to see
09:47
whether or not it works in other
09:48
cultures and six country studies by MIT
09:56
and Yale was published yes last year in
10:00
the science magazine and all showed
10:03
improvement in the lives of the very
10:06
poorest if you provide the same kind of
10:10
services that that prac initially
10:14
promoted somehow the very poorest to the
10:17
poor never had that big push and once
10:21
you get to give the big push and they
10:24
see that their own action is changing
10:27
their own condition the Can go on working
10:30
harder to try and get it cut themselves
out of poverty
xxxxx
:37
at brac we were ambitious we
00:40
wanted to change at Bangladesh scale -this can
00:43
also be done by small activities and
00:46
then having multiple actors sort of
00:51
replicating it throughout the country
00:53
that can also be done but then you have
00:56
to find other people following you and
00:58
replicating your work as well and they
01:01
in the world so I so that one kind of
01:05
scale that has happened in Bangladesh around 1980
01:08
for example in microfinance when we
01:13
started microfinance microfinance which was not
01:19
came Grameen Bank in 1983 another organization
01:22
similar to us and they focused their
01:25
attention on just financial services while we already a decade into building health and education -so brac did all three
01:27
- for over a decade muhammad yunus did microfinance village circles in bangladesh
01:31
he also did a lot of
global advocacy -the clinto family visited yunus around 1989 before bill clinton became us president
01:39
so yunus sought to take microcredit all over the world
01:41
---- as a result microcredit summit was launched in 1997 and
01:43
microfinance started to test where lives mattered to leaders around the world
01:46
almost every country started trying it as hope of a new millennium rose in 1990s
01:48
to be clear bangladesh services for the poor evolved in villages with no access to electricity, where all communications and trust building from person to person as one as one of the ways
01:51
of alleviating poverty so that was done
01:55
not by one single organization making it
01:59
really large program but multiple
02:02
organization in many countries expanding
02:05
microfinance and having an impact on
02:13
we need to break the cycle of poverty
02:16
somewhere breaking the cycle of poverty
02:20
means that you have to the next
02:22
generation of children if they get
02:25
better education better now issues and
02:27
then they'll come out of poverty so we
02:31
are looking at providing quality
02:33
education to children we are looking at
02:38
providing better nutrition or nutrition
02:42
education to mothers so that their
02:44
children get better nutrition so the
02:47
next generation is healthier has better
02:50
education so poverty can ultimately be
02:53
reduced in societies so education
02:57
nutrition health opportu creating
03:01
opportunities by training people in
03:04
various kinds of skills so these are
03:07
important issues and we are concerned
03:16
ten years ago we were looking at what do
03:19
the poor people want from us to the need
03:22
better seeds to grow a better food or
03:27
hope or how could they could we improve
03:31
their productivity and we found that
03:34
many women who produce vegetables didn't
03:38
have an access to a good seed pocket
03:41
seed multiplication was not there and
03:43
they couldn't find good seeds in the
03:45
market so we went to the seed production
03:48
first of all vegetable seeds and then
03:50
way we went into hybrid Macy's hydrate
03:54
rice seeds we went to joint venture with
03:56
China with Australia to produce high
03:59
quality seeds upon whether she's poor
04:01
can have access to high-quality seeds
04:03
and that has also had an impact on
04:06
productivity or our agriculture over
04:08
time so these are important .....
04:12
now looking forward from 1999 after 3 decades what next generation of enterprises
04:18
could brac provide support to? we could help
04:23
in private education wherever state education is
04:30
there are parents who are looking for
04:32
quality education for their children but
04:35
even lower middle class even even poorer
04:38
people now having to pay out for private
04:42
tuition private tutors to teach the
04:45
children in order to pass exams so if
04:48
they're ready to put in a five to ten
04:51
dollars a month could we provide instead
04:56
of free education could we provide a
04:59
quality primary education by charging
05:02
them ten dollars a month or fifteen
05:04
dollars a month could we provide that so
05:07
we are now looking at a possible
05:10
enterprise and quality education for
05:14
x https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DgZ9HdNBhg
00:16
great innovators worldwide in this you
00:19
started in Bangladesh you're now in 12
00:21
countries one of the things that I've
00:24
always find interesting you know I go to
00:26
a lot of events like this where there
00:28
are very important for the people
00:31
sitting in a room but they're often not
00:32
the poor or the laborers you feel that
00:35
it's very important for the poor to be
00:38
part of the whole process of poverty
00:40
reduction I wonder if you can tell us a
00:41
little bit about that and and the
00:43
impetus for founding your organization
00:45
well I I come from the private sector I
00:48
worked in h LOL company as an executive
00:51
in 1970 when i was finance director of
00:55
pakistan shale oil something happened in
00:59
bangladesh which sort of killed four
01:03
hundred really for mill 3 million people
01:05
of the cyclone which sort of inundated
01:08
the big 30 feet storm surge which took
01:15
away large numbers of people and died
01:17
and i started a relief work with with
01:20
some of my friends in that area and
01:23
while going to do the relief work I
01:26
looked at I I by helicopter visiting
01:31
this area and I looked at the bay and
01:34
there was bodies all around the shallow
01:37
waters of the bay of men children
01:41
livestock all kinds of things that
01:43
shocked me and suddenly I thought that
01:47
the kind of life I was leading has no
01:50
meaning at all though it was completely
01:52
disconnected from the people who were
01:55
poor dying like this in a cyclone like
01:59
this so that sort of changed my life
02:02
completely and I immediately after that
02:04
there was a liberation war in Bangladesh
02:08
become a refugee London and then I came
02:11
back after the liberation of Bangladesh
02:13
in Bangladesh was the was second poorest
02:16
country on Earth we had per capita
02:22
income of less than ninety dollars per
02:25
year and so the so the relief and
02:31
rehabilitation work we started with with
02:33
the 10 million refugees who came back
02:35
from India was one of we have been able
02:39
to do something like building houses
02:42
providing health care to people feeding
02:44
children and so on but then we just
02:47
decided that unless poverty is tackled
02:50
in a systematic way in Bangladesh and
02:53
unless you can scale up your program and
02:58
you can you can't really have any impact
03:00
on poverty so over the last 4 45 years
03:04
I've worked on on multi-variant shins of
03:10
poverty education healthcare agriculture
03:13
fisheries livestock all kinds of things
03:17
which sort of you know address many
03:20
dimensions of poverty and and and what I
03:23
wanted to do I wanted to get the poor
03:26
people to be a solution rather than a
03:30
than problem so organizing people
03:34
getting providing them with with the
03:38
kind of opportunities for providing the
03:41
enabling conditions like financial
03:43
services so that they can do hard work
03:45
themselves to improve their own
03:47
conditioned getting children to school
03:50
getting family planning services to
03:53
women and then also I felt that family
03:56
planning you know I remember Bangladesh
03:59
used to have seven point eight seven
04:02
point four children per woman and I
04:06
thought in Bangladesh PO was going to
04:08
reproduce like this then 74 million
04:11
bhangra the chest in 1972 will become
04:14
150 million by 2000 so I started working
04:18
but the family planning wouldn't work
04:20
well unless the child survival hundred
04:22
the children survived so we started
04:26
working in a national scale in child in
04:29
trying to cut down infant mortality of
04:32
child mortality so if I go we couldn't
04:37
go ahead and make a point then I wanna
04:38
yeah yeah I want to just actually drill
04:40
down to one thing you said which is it
04:43
seems like you're trying to help people
04:44
graduate from poverty by actually
04:47
providing them not just with a service
04:50
but with an asset you know asset
04:51
building which is so important when we
04:53
think about where wealth is these days
04:55
it's all about building asset yes not
04:58
just being given something we have a
04:59
program where we are working with that
05:01
with the extremely poor we for example
05:04
we did a survey in Bangladesh in 1994
05:07
which found that Bangladesh was doing
05:10
microfinance program microfinance
05:12
program was covering many people many
05:14
poor people but the poorest ten percent
05:16
of bangladesh's population were not
05:18
having access to more financial services
05:20
because they were not they thought to be
05:24
not fit to get loan and to be able to
05:28
repay this loan the the village people
05:31
who were getting the microfiber they
05:33
were keeping themselves keeping them out
05:34
so we decided to have a different
05:37
program for there for the extremely poor
05:39
people to come out of poverty we call it
05:41
a graduation program and we provide
05:42
services stress stage services over two
05:48
year period we provide them a stipend we
05:50
provide them an asset we provide them
05:53
health care we take their children to
05:55
school and we connect them with their
05:58
local communities so most of the poor
06:01
people safe seems to be disc akum
06:03
marginalized and can't have equal kind
06:06
of relationship with their own
06:07
communities so that we do and and we
06:10
have found that over the last you know
06:13
50 last 15 years of work 1.6 billion
06:18
families I have graduated out of poverty
06:20
and now they can take back to financial
06:24
services and other services from us
06:26
please and then come out of poverty all
06:28
together what advice would you offer for
06:31
business leaders out here that have a
06:32
tremendous amount of assets that they're
06:34
fingertip to help the poor build assets
06:37
I mean what do you see out there in the
06:38
marketplace that's not being done well
06:40
enough right now well I think business
06:43
people are doing the job of that their
06:48
work of job creation in any case so they
06:50
should continue to do that I think I I
06:54
don't want to you know give them a
06:57
particular thing to do how would I want
07:00
is that business people should think
07:01
about what kind of you knows what kind
07:05
of solution they want to bring to the
07:07
problems of poverty problems of climate
07:10
change problems of you know problems of
07:17
any kind of the various kinds of
07:20
problems that we have including human
07:23
rights and so on so whatever their
07:25
business organization or the chief
07:28
executive things that this is interested
07:30
in and he can die he can identify the
07:34
kind of programs which are which are
07:37
doing well and which can be supported
07:39
that this should be supported to be
07:41
scaled up with the idea I think the most
07:45
important lesson that that I of my work
07:49
over the last 40 years is that unless we
07:51
scale up things it doesn't have an
07:53
impact unless we do things which is you
07:58
know sort of sustainable sustainability
08:01
is another problem I tell you a story
08:03
about sustainability there was this
08:05
historian who did a study of 15th
08:08
century 16th century European
08:11
institutions 500 of them and found only
08:15
34 33 survive today what are these 33
08:19
institutions from 16th century which
08:22
still survives 29 of them are
08:24
universities one business to churches in
08:30
one Parliament Wow why so I asked asked
08:34
him why he universities are the most
08:37
sustainable institution because he said
08:39
that that all societies from 16th
08:42
century onwards in Europe obviously
08:45
leaders and they were trained by the
08:47
universities at the universities also
08:49
did another thing they always changed
08:52
with the evolving needs of society hmm
08:55
so that's sustainability that's
08:59
fascinating it's also a great lesson at
09:00
a time when so many institutions public
09:02
and private or under under threat right
09:04
okay um let me ask you we've got time
09:06
for just a couple more questions you've
09:09
actually structured your nonprofit as a
09:11
brand and and you feel that brand
09:13
extension brand awareness is actually
09:15
very important in terms of the work that
09:17
you do tell us a little bit more about
09:18
that that's unusual for a non-profit
09:20
well well whatever we do we try to do
09:23
the best we can so we have for example
09:26
in Bangladesh we have educated nearly
09:28
11.8 million children through primary
09:31
schools seven billion of them are girls
09:33
because we focused on girls education we
09:36
provided high quality education and then
09:38
our girls are doing much better in high
09:40
school and in the university now so this
09:43
is a kind of brand so black so when
09:46
black set up a bank which also became
09:50
another brand so we provide high quality
09:53
banking services to everybody here is
09:56
just so break and now has gotten
09:59
University this is the top university in
10:01
Bangladesh today so it's a kind of
10:04
quality service that people expect from
10:06
us so whether it is serving the we serve
10:10
the poorest people but we try to serve
10:12
the best quality and and we have also
10:16
set up large numbers of enterprises so
10:18
that we are not totally dependent or
10:20
donors so although donor funding is
10:23
still needed in Bangladesh hyper our
10:25
budget in Bangladesh for example is what
10:27
a billion dollars or which about 80%
10:30
comes from our businesses and twenty
10:33
percent comes from money from donors so
10:35
let me let me ask you the last question
10:38
there's been so much work in the last
10:40
several decades around poverty reduction
10:42
a lot of it has been unsuccessful um
10:44
particularly a lot of the government
10:45
work has been unsuccessful yes um with
10:48
these business leaders who are eager to
10:50
hear more about these topics to get more
10:52
involved in poverty reduction inequality
10:54
reduction what are the pitfall
10:56
that you've seen and what can they be
10:57
doing going forward if you could maybe
10:59
share two or three lessons quickly I
11:01
think many of the programs poverty
11:06
alleviation programs are not really
11:07
designed well they don't reach they they
11:11
don't reach the poorest of the poor they
11:13
don't they are not targeted properly and
11:15
as a result results are not very good so
11:18
I think what is needed is that you need
11:22
a small pilot projects which tends to
11:27
work so you have to make it effective
11:29
and then you have to make it efficient
11:31
by organizing tasks which are essential
11:33
and cutting out those which are not not
11:36
essential so if when a program is small
11:39
program becomes effective and efficient
11:41
then and then only can scale up there be
11:43
ruthless during targeting up to Milan
11:45
and cognitive targeting perfecting if it
11:49
make it more efficient yeah and then
11:51
escape okay and many of the programs
11:54
that we see are good I've never reached
11:57
scale as a result they don't have really
11:59
have much impact okay well that's a good
12:02
note to end on we've ended with an
12:03
actual solution that people can think
12:05
about thank you so much circl
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