After a day touring the activities of BRAC, we had a day of meetings. The day began with a keynote address from Degan Ali, Executive Director of Adeso. Her address was thought provoking and although I did not agree with all her points, she highlighted the need for social and economic empowerment to come from the communities where it is needed. Her view is that reliance on outside donors and aid agencies can perpetuate the colonialism that has not served much of the world very well.
Adeso with others has been active in creating “The Pledge for Change 2030 (which) re-imagines the role of INGOs in the global humanitarian and development aid system.” Additional insight into Degan Ali’s views can be found on her blog on the Adeso website.
We then moved on to learn about the Accelerating Impact for Young Women, a project in which BRAC partners with MasterCard to equip “1.2 million adolescent girls and young women (AGYW), with age-appropriate entrepreneurship, employability, and life-skills training, as well as the tools to start and scale their own businesses.”
We had seen aspects of this program on the day before when we were in the field. Today was more of a focus on lessons learned. We also had the chance to talk in small groups with mentors who are the key drivers of this program. They work with several groups of young girls and women to create an environment that enables them to be successful. As with all BRAC activities they quickly begin with a program and evaluate it on a regular basis for changes that will lead to better results.
