some update on brac posted from other webs while we review where to link into curricula of brac

[chris macrae]

from business fights poverty

bKash and BRAC Bank supported her expedition.

Blog: Financial Inclusion - Hybrid Models for a Complex World

Blog: Extending Financial Access to Young People

Interview: bKash of Bangladesh

Blog: Lessons on Inclusive Supply Chains and Achieving Scale

Blog: Innovative Funding for Early Childhood Development

Blog: Delivering Care to Last Mile Communities

Blog: Local Investments for Local Farmers

Blog: The Benefits of Asset Versus Cash Transfer Programmes

Podcast: Jaideep Prabhu, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge

Link: BRAC UK

By Zoya Shabir, Stratigic Partnerships Programme Officer at BRAC UK

Fashion, fish and financial inclusion. 

What connects all three? In Bangladesh these are all part of an evolved structure put in place by BRAC that combines community empowerment with sustainability and shared values. BRAC is synonymous with business and market-based solutions in Bangladesh, where the breadth and scope of our work is felt at a local, national, and now international level.

Launched in a post-independent Bangladesh 42 years ago, business has long been in the heart of our psyche. Initially created as a relief and rehabilitation organisation, the founder, Sir Fazle Hasan Abed wanted to empower the women in his home community through financial inclusion, and soon started BRAC’s microfinance operations with all-female clients. Fast-forward four decades and BRAC’s operations now disburse USD 1 billion a year in Bangladesh alone, and USD 70 million worldwide still focusing on women. More recently BRAC is piloting initiatives to extend microfinance services to young people. 

Bringing business in-house

Finance

Although BRAC addresses problems of financial inclusion for the bottom of the pyramid, we still noticed a gap in the system. As we scaled up our presence it became clear that there was a demographic addressed neither by microfinance nor by commercial banks – those with small and medium enterprises (SMEs). So what was the obvious solution? Create a bank, of course. Launched in 2001 BRAC Bank is today a fully commercial operation that disburses average loans of USD 7,000. The advent of cheap mobile phones catalysed an era of mobile money solutions for the poor, so three years ago BRAC created a mobile financial service provider which currently has 15 million subscribers, reaching a client base of 11 million accounts 30 months after launch. bKash joined the already robust group of BRAC social enterprises with minority shareholders such as Bill and Melinda Gates and the International Finance Committee. Instead of providing adjacent revenue streams to mobile network providers or banks bKash is a purpose built stand-alone business.

Market linkages, strengthening value chain

Aarong was launched in the 1970’s providing an alternative means to productive livelihoods for women outside of agriculture. The commercialisation of arts and crafts such as silk embroidery and block printing was a viable option and 35 years later Aarong is a platform for rural artisan women to sell their products in urban markets. Continuously developing the skills of artisans through training programmes and providing social support, Aarong also conducts quality control of the completed items before they are bought at a fair price and then sold across retail outlets. With a decentralised model in place the business now supports 320,000 direct and indirect beneficiaries.

From fisheries and dairy to poultry and feed mills, today BRAC in Bangladesh is able to derive over 70% of its development funding from the profits of over 16 diverse social enterprises, resulting in a largely self-sustaining mechanism. BRAC has an ability to understand gaps in the market and create businesses that don’t just provide employment, but where the profits go back to beneficiaries. This has brought new meaning to the expression ‘creating shared value’, and checks the 3P’s (People, Planet, Profits) for triple bottom line approaches.

But the question remains: was this development serendipity that could really only happen in Bangladesh or is this a model that has the ability to be adapted and replicated elsewhere?

Beyond the horizon – business as usual?

BRAC now works with 135 million people across 11 countries and is adapting many of our successful programmes including agriculture, livelihood creation, adolescent empowerment, health and education to new country contexts. But can the business-like approach be replicated further afield? BRAC Bangladesh had a conducive ecosystem with a flexible regulatory environment and both population density and a homogeneity that lent itself to sustainability and scalability.

Our global work on the other hand will need to take into account fragile infrastructures and population disparities. Funding pools are restricted,however with a new focus on leveraging private sector capital through innovative financing mechanisms like Impact Bonds we look forward to seeing new players at the table. There are successes, no doubt; in Uganda BRAC has been in partnership with Living Goods, leveraging a cohort of Community Health Workers to create a successful social enterprise that has resulted in large scale impact in health indicators while supporting the micro-entrepreneur model. 

In Tanzania BRAC is running the Livelihood Enhancement through Agricultural Development (LEAD) programme targeting 48,000 farmers in 168 districts. The aim is to increase rural income, build capacity of smallholder farmers, and improve agriculture productivity and food security in order to assist farmers to access high quality farming inputs, and market their produce. Our Targeting the Ultra Poor (TUP) [Cash Vs Cows] model provides intense time bound support to the very poor in order to create livelihoods and achieve financial inclusion and has been successful in complex environments in Pakistan and South Sudan.

The key emerging theme is that in a world where businesses are encouraged to absorb CSR into their corporate agenda and align their balance sheets with social objectives, it is just as vital for NGOs to think outside their comfort zone, and look beyond their scope, towards innovative solutions. As BRAC has shown, one can blur the lines and still hold true to a mandate to uplift the people at the bottom of the pyramid. It’s not just about thinking outside the box, but not having a box at all.

[chris macrae]

Katie Allen: Interview with Kamal Quadir CEO of bKash

				Katie Allen: Interview with Kamal Quadir CEO of bKash Blog: Financial Inclusion - Hybrid Models for a Complex World Blog: Extending Financial Access to Young People Interview: bKash of Bangladesh Blog: L...
				View on community.business...	Preview by Yahoo

Katie Allen interviews Kamal Quadir, CEO of bKash, mobile money provider in Bangladesh.

Q1: Many of us have heard of the M-Pesa phenomenon that achieved great success in East Africa, but bKash remains under the radar. How is BKash different from other mobile money providers?

Kamal Quadir: In terms of customer experience, bKash is no different from a wallet offered by a telecomm like M-Pesa. However, there are big differences in regulatory perspective. In bKash’s case mobile operators provide the necessary connectivity pipes between user-owned handsets and servers of the financial service providers. bKash distinguishes by offering a model which is regulated by the central bank where the mobile network operator sells connectivity, unlike some other countries where such service is offered by mobile network operators. 

Q2 The latest publicly available data shows that by the end of 2013, just 30 months after launching, bKash accounted for more than 11 million of the total 13 million mobile money users in Bangladesh – What do you think have been the most crucial factors of your success?

KQ: bKash had a single minded focus of providing financial service to the poor and unbanked population. For instance, it’s important to come up with a simple interface that can be accessed by the cheapest (i.e. $15) handset. An easy way out would have been to develop an application for smart phones, but then the service would be limited to only affluent customers and would defeat the purpose of reaching the unbanked and poor. We opted for USSD which allowed anybody to access the bKash platform by dialling an access code, regardless of the sophistication of the handset. Registering for bKash and cashing-in services are free of charge. For person-to-person (P2P) transfers, customers pay a flat fee of BDT 5 (or $.04) irrespective of the size of the transaction. In case a customer wants to cash-out, there is a flat fee of 1.85% on the amount withdrawn. For example, if a user wants to cash-out BDT 50, the cash-out fee is BDT 0.92 (or $.01). 

Q3: It has recently been said that to get the most value out of bKash customers would have to use bKash’s “wallet” function. This requires a level of (English) literacy and numeracy skills that the vast majority of Bangladesh’s low-income bKash users do not have. Are there any plans to translate this?

KQ: Although very little English is required to use the service, people perceive that advanced English is required. bKash’s education programs seek to overcome this perception gap. In fact, the bKash menu is so easy to use that, once a user becomes familiar with the steps, s/he can opt for the required service by simply choosing a numerical input and not have to respond with any text reply. We have seen how semi-literate people have learnt how to use mobile phones, and even improvised by writing Bangla SMS using the Roman alphabet.

Meanwhile, fundamentally, the only qualification needed to use bKash is confidence – the confidence to believe that one can take control of his/her financial decisions, save money, spend wisely and complete a transaction in a manner that has never been possible before. Old habits (like keeping money under a mattress, insecure transfers, paying high transfer fees, not being interested in being a part of financial inclusivity) need to be replaced by new habits (keeping money in a safe digital system, secure transfers, paying low fees, recognizing the importance of being part of financial inclusivity) to harness the full potential of the bKash service. 

Q3: Millions of low value business transactions take place every day in Bangladesh, especially in Dhaka, are there any plans to create financial products for these transactions? Or will clients need to continue to use agents?

KQ: bKash has built its foundation by providing a basic money transfer service. We find most of the cash-in areas are commercial and industrial hubs where people come from far away districts in search of jobs. On the other side, cash-out regions are those which are far from the bustling commercial hubs, specifically the districts that are historically least developed in the country. Earlier these people used to send money home using informal systems through friends and families. Mobile money services like bKash have brought these transactions under a regulated system prescribed and monitored by the central bank. Users are also transacting with remote businesses, parents send fees to children studying in distant cities, the ultra-poor are receiving financial assistance from donors on time, and the applications go on. We have started piloting with microfinance and insurance services.  

Regarding use of agents in completing financial transactions we have to note that when typical bKash customers learn how to use bKash, they are often interacting with electronic financial system for the first time thus the natural apprehension towards technology comes in the equation. However, when our sales teams and agents interact with individuals and explain the importance of self-service, users gradually adopt the technology.

Q4: What are the benefits of being associated with an NGO?

KQ: bKash is a subsidiary of BRAC bank—an SME focused commercial bank founded by BRAC's Chairperson Sir Fazle Hasan Abed. Besides maintaining the ethos of BRAC, there are tangible values of the association. For instance, bKash needed to create a physical distribution network of agents that reaches far into the rural areas. The microfinance division of BRAC NGO played a critical role in the early days as a distributor, and helped to recruit agents nationwide.

Q5: How do you foster innovation at bKash?

KQ: Since inception, any innovation bKash considered has always been customer centric while giving paramount importance to the safety of the depositors. At the same time bKash is keen to identify the pain point(s) the innovation tries to address, the innovation’s purpose and goals, and its strengths and weaknesses, so that we can shape it in ways that makes it sustainable.

Q6: Where do you want bKash to be in 3 years? 5 years?

KQ: bKash is a tool to address payment and money transfer efficiently. The poor, who have access to the ubiquitous mobile infrastructure, can now have access to this state-of-the-art technology to leapfrog into financial inclusivity.

How people improvise when using the service is up to them. Somebody can come up with a unique ‘solar electricity’ service where a solar panel provider offers electricity supply in a remote village and asks the customer to pay through bKash. This way, the expensive and time consuming task of physically traveling miles to pay or collect bills is avoided. By eliminating this significant cost factor, operations would become more efficient, thus making the business case more viable for all. This arrangement can make great sense especially for people living in remote islands. So it all depends on how we use bKash or similar services, and I believe necessity will drive innovation.

I also found this note on brac community health workers valuable (always interested in being sent info if you see more on this)

By Katie Allen, BRAC UK Communications and Marketing and Adepo Emmanuel Okaalet, Communications Manager, BRAC Uganda

Traditional hospital-based services are not able to reach some of the world’s poorest and most remote villages. Over one billion people globally, including 400 million Africans, lack access to health services because they live too far from a health facility. Rural communities know that if a child becomes ill, the long walk for treatment could potentially turn a minor ailment into a serious health problem.

Distribution of healthcare products in hard-to-reach markets presents a huge challenge which providers are eager to meet;Cola Life use Coca-Cola and other commodity producers to open up private sector supply chains for ‘social products’ such as oral rehydration salts and zinc supplements.

BRAC has always believed that you need to take healthcare out into the community. Our model successfully delivers sustainable and accessible healthcare in some of the poorest and most remote communities in the world. Community Health Workers, local women that are selected and trained by BRAC, go door-to-door offering basic curative services and products for family planning, deliver health and nutrition education and refer cases of HIV, TB and malaria to local health facilities. Local health workers know their communities the best and are best placed to engage with them on personal and family issues.  

Our model currently costs money to operate. Funding generously donated from partners and donors enables us to empower women like Nalongo, 41, a mother of six living in a rural village in Uganda to work for herself as a micro-entrepreneur. BRAC makes central purchases of high quality low-cost health products, enabling a mark-up for our health workers, whilst also delivering an affordable health solution to families in remote communities. Health workers earn between USD 20-25 a month, which is crucial to ensure the sustainability of the programme but also supports women like Nalongo to build their lives. Nalongo has managed to save and tells us she has “used that to educate my children; my triplets are now in Form One. I have bought a piece of land and I am now saving to build a house.” She believes that improving health begins at home and works with us to raise awareness in her local area with a focus on antenatal and postnatal advice.

Recently, in partnership with Living Goods we have been building on our micro-entrepreneur model to reach the shared goal of reducing under-five mortality by 15 per cent in target areas. Our goal is to build a fully financially sustainable social enterprise model to deliver healthcare especially to last mile communities and those at the bottom of the pyramid. This model will generate revenue that pays for the products, provides higher and more motivating incomes for the health workers, and covers the distribution costs.

Early evaluations have shown that our partnership has successfully reduced under-5 mortality by 20 per cent in the communities that we operate in and prompted a drop in prices for medicines. Currently the model recoups 100 per cent of the product costs, the promoters earn a motivating income and the wholesale margin covers a proportion, but not all, of the running costs.

With continued funding and with the strength of the partnership yielding beneficial cross learnings we hope to demonstrate to the global health community that an entrepreneurial, integrated community health network at scale can deliver impact at very low cost. 

If you are working to try and deliver healthcare to remote communities and have any insights, tips or experiences to share with our team we want to hear from you.