Challenges of Scaling-up a Program for the Poorest: BRAC's IGVGD Program

This paper describes the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee's (BRAC) Income Generation for Vulnerable Groups Development (IGVGD) program and examines reasons for its success.

The paper states that:

• IGVGD uses microfinance to build opportunity ladders for the poorest and lay long-term sustainable foundations for food security and livelihoods improvements;
• The IGVGD program builds on a government safety-net program that provides destitute women with free food-grain for an 18-month period;
• BRAC organizes these women into groups and provides basic savings, credit services, and skills training;
• As a result of participation in IGVGD:
  • Women are operating microenterprises and earning incomes that enable them to stay above their previous levels of destitution;
  • Women are graduating to regular microfinance programs that improve their economic conditions.

The paper states that the success of such a strategic linkage program between grant-based and market-based microfinance depends upon:

• Careful planning, and committed management;
• Constant learning and innovation;
• Negotiations with partners;
• A willingness to take on the challenges of developing markets to open up new opportunities for the very poor;
• Vision and commitment to include the poorest.

The paper concludes that:

• Carefully designed strategic linkages that include grants with a central role for microfinance can work for the poorest;
• The poorest have to be central to the vision and commitment of microfinance institutions in order to develop possibilities and opportunities to include them.