Tackling Ultra-Poverty through the Graduation Approach

Experience from BRAC’s Targeting the Ultra Poor (“TUP”) program as well as the replication efforts of the CGAP/Ford Foundation Graduation Program has demonstrated that BRAC’s approach for eliminating extreme poverty not only has impact, but also is scalable and cost effective. These results if replicated on a global scale offer a realistic possibility of eliminating extreme poverty within a generation.

As part of its advocacy efforts to globalize the adaptation and replication of the Graduation Approach, BRAC USA and BRAC recently commissioned a landscape study with support from The MasterCard Foundation. The study, “Tackling Ultra Poverty through the Graduation Approach” is authored by Heather Grady and Ama Marston and seeks to situate the Graduation Approach in the larger field of Social Protection and Sustainable Livelihoods so that implementing organizations can expand its scale and encourage others to support and adopt the approach. In addition to illustrating how characteristics of approaches like BRAC’s can augment those of others, the study offers some guideposts about how to get governments, foundations and civil society organizations more focused on improving the well-being of the ultra-poor.