RAISING >2 BILLION HUMANS INTELLIGENCES BY 25 YEARS. After helping with recovery 1970 cyclone killing half a million of his compatriots, Fazle Abed was nearly assassinated by his employer Royal Dutch Shell and the Pakistani army. Fortunately he spent his remaining 50 years celebrating intelligence development of the poorest 2 billion parents notably growth of 1billiongirls. For over quarter of a century all networking was done by word of mouth and sight of book because in Asia 20th c village life still meant no access to electricity grids or telephone lines. Fortunately both Computing Whizs Jobs & Gates were both partly dis-satisfied with western apps of pc networks which they had begun in 1984. Around 2001 they both hosted silicon valley 65th birthday wish parties for Abed as global village tech envoy. Partners in life critical challenges had begun to bring abed's village mothers solar and mobile to co-create with. Abed changed the way Jobs saw tech futures of education (see ) and how Gates saw global health fund foundations and overall the valley's university stanford started to see as far as intelligence of Women and Youth goes the most life critical knowhow for 2 billion humans wasnt directly measurable in 90 day monetary flows; it was measurable in increased life expectancy by over 25 years during Abed's community servant leadership. Probably the greatest lift in intelligence until celebrations of what Fei-Fei Li opened the worlds eyes to in 2012, and Melinda Gates and Nvidia's Jensen Huang were first to helped AIforall lift since 2014.

Friday, December 31, 2010

*4 education

http://www.brac.net/sites/default/files/BRAC_education_info_English.pdf

BRAC’s Evolution - part 4 education follows below

 // ref *3 health  2 food/land security  1 finance  5 community partner collabs

1972 Fazle Hasan Abed establishes BRAC 

1973 Activities transform from relief and rehabilitation to long term community development, including adult literacy interventions 

1985 BRAC’s Non-Formal Primary Education Programme (NFPE) is started 

1993 Adolescent Reading Centres are opened 

1994 The Non-Formal Primary Education programme is replicated in Africa 

1995 The Continuing Education programme is started

 1997 BRAC Pre-Primary Schools commence operation 

1999 The Adolescent Peer Organised Network (APON) course is created

 2001 BRAC University is established. 

 The Post-Primary Basic Education (PBEn) programme is set up 

2002 BRAC commences development work in Afghanistan 

2003 The Continuing Education and Post Primary Basic Education programmes are integrated into a single programme called the Post Primary Basic and Continuing Education (PACE) programme 

2004 BRAC University establishes the James P. Grant School of Public Health and the Institute of Educational Development 

2006 BRAC’s development programmes in Africa commence 

2008 BRAC’s education programme initiates capacity building of government and registered non-government primary schools

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Sir Fazle Hasan Abed’s immense contribution to education is through the pioneering work of BRAC, a development organisation he founded and led to his death in 2019. When Abed established BRAC in early 1972 as a relief and rehabilitation project in a remote village in Bangladesh, immediately following the country’s war of liberation, the literacy rate was below 20%.

Despite the population more than doubling since then, the country has made remarkable progress in providing access to education. Almost all children now enroll in the first year of primary school. Uniquely among poor countries, the gender gap in enrollment in primary and secondary education has also been eliminated. Alongside government and private sector efforts, BRAC’s groundbreaking education programme, a brainchild of Abed, is a key factor in these achievements.

 From the beginning of his foray into development work, Abed viewed education as a crucial catalyst for change. In his youth, he was influenced by the teachings of his maternal grandfather, an education minister in the government of Bengal. Later he was inspired by the ideas of the likes of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. Soon after starting BRAC’s relief and rehabilitation activities, Abed realized the need for sustainable development efforts. When BRAC shifted its focus to long term community development activities in 1972, education naturally became a key area of work. Abed’s very first development plan for BRAC aimed to make literate the entire adult population of the 1.1 meta-village in which it was then working and get all primary school dropouts back into school.

But Abed understood that education was about more than just schools and books. He ensured that functional education was an underlying fundamental in BRAC’s organizing principles. Initially, this encompassed awareness building and literacy and numeracy skills for adults. Abed had BRAC develop its own learning materials in the form of posters, flip charts etc. By the end of the 1970’s, BRAC had developed a comprehensive educational system, including a community development and literacy and numeracy curricula, training, research and publishing. But functional education for adults would not ensure sustainable progress for such a large population. For that, Abed believed there was a need to ensure primary level literacy for all children. In 1974, BRAC started engaging with the primary education sector through a monthly magazine for children which was sent to all 45,000 public schools in the country. But poverty, distance, corruption and poor quality of education were keeping a large majority of children from the public school system.

So, in 1985, Abed initiated a pilot non-formal primary education programme. He wanted to demonstrate that education could be made relevant, cost-effective and of a high quality and that retention rates could be improved and gender imbalance could be rectified. In conducting this experiment, Abed sought help from expert educators at local universities. What emerged was a revolutionary model in primary education – a one-room school where a teacher who is a member of the local community takes a class of 33 children through the entire 5-year primary curriculum in four years. The school’s customized curriculum and books were designed using state-of-the-art teaching-learning methods and strong involvement of both parents. 

Abed had always believed that women, though worst affected by poverty, could play a crucial role as agents of change. He understood that educating girls would not only empower them and help improve their status in their families and community, but also ensure their future family’s wellbeing. Educated women would make better decisions regarding family planning etc. and subsequently their children’s health and education. So, as with all BRAC initiatives, gender became an essential ingredient for BRAC’s education programme from the very beginning. To offset the existing gender imbalance in Bangladesh’s education system, Abed set a target of 70% for the enrolment of girls and encouraged the recruitment of mostly female teachers. His extensive reading helped Abed keep up with the latest thinking on development issues. He reached out to educators in the Netherlands, New Zealand and England to help develop interactive learning material for BRAC schools.

 Abed is a big believer in scale. “Small is beautiful,”he is known to say, “but in bangladesh big is necessary”. So when the pilot schools, whose terms ended in 1987, proved to be a success, Abed had his team scale up and in just five short years, BRAC recovered almost 20,000 children who had been fallen out of the formal system. By the mid 90’s, BRAC had 19,000 schools and graduated over 500,000 children in Bangladesh and its school model was being replicated in Africa. 

A large majority of BRAC graduates in Bangladesh were going into the public system for higher education. But some, mostly girls, were not continuing their education due to social pressures such as marriage. For these adolescents, Abed set up a‘continuing education’ programme, which encompassed community libraries and adolescent reading centres where these students could stay in touch with books and learning materials. Eventually, these centres became a platform for further functional education and empowerment of adolescent girls. 

Abed understood the need for harnessing the power of the youth – not only those from disadvantaged families, but also the elite. Under his guidance, BRAC set up a university with the mission to build capacity on a national level by creating “functional elites”. In addition to providing a comprehensive liberal education, BRAC University has established several institutes for post-graduate research and training to strengthen human capacity in several key areas critical to national development.

 It was always Abed’s intention that BRAC schools would be a temporary solution to the issue of access to education. He aimed for a deeper engagement with the formal education system. Towards this, one initiative he undertook was the development in 1997 of a network of pre-primary schools to give young children from illiterate households a head start before they entered into the formal primary system. Before this, pre-primary education was a concept reserved for the elite in Bangladesh. It is now being adopted into the national education system. 

The government has since actively involved BRAC in providing educational development services. In 1997, BRAC partnered with the government to develop the teaching and management capacities of public secondary school teachers and administrators. 

In 1999, BRAC took over dysfunctional community primary schools to make them operational. In 2002, intent on spreading the learning of BRAC’s post-war rehabilitation experience in Bangladesh, 

Abed established BRAC’s first international operations in Afghanistan. Education was a key sector there as well, especially for girls. Of the over 70,000 students currently attending BRAC schools in Afghanistan, 85% are girls. Abed has institutionalized cros-cutting concepts of inclusiveness and innovation at BRAC. 

In the education sector, the development of bi-lingual schools and materials for ethnic minority groups, inclusion of special needs children in BRAC schools, training of teachers and communities on special needs issues and equipping schools and students with assistive devices are testaments to this. Constant innovation is a cornerstone of BRAC’s education programme, which has introduced concepts such as computer-aided learning, Multi Strategy Language Teaching, mentoring etc. into both its own operations as well as partner systems. 

No other organisation can match the range, quality, scale and effectiveness of BRAC’s education programme. Present in half of the 10 countries across Asia, Africa and the Caribbean in which BRAC currently operates, it is the largest secular, non-formal education system in the world. More than 35,000 BRAC schools worldwide are providing primary education to more than 1 million students (over 65% girls). Nearly 5 million children (over 65% girls) have already graduated from BRAC’s primary schools and over 95% of them have gone on to formal schooling at the secondary level. It is also one of the most effective - in Bangladesh’s state-conducted primary completion examination in 2010, 99 percent of the BRAC students passed, a rate at least 15% higher than the national average. But what really differentiates BRAC’s education programme from all others is its costeffectiveness. In Bangladesh, the per-child cost for BRAC’s four-year primary education is under USD 30! 

And BRAC’s interventions are not limited to just primary schooling – between early childhood to young-adulthood, almost 10 million people have to date directly benefited from a variety of education interventions run by BRAC. It is the foresight and guidance of Sir Fazle Hasan Abed which has made these achievements possible. He has been the visionary behind most of BRAC’s groundbreaking interventions in education, quietly guiding his team of dedicated development practitioners towards constant reinvention. Of all his successes in ensuring education for all, Abed can be most proud that in the hearts of millions of disadvantaged children around the world he has inculcated a love of learning which they will carry with them for the rest of their lives

Monday, October 25, 2010

The 21st C started openly with exhcnages bteween the 2 most miraculous end poverty approaches since 1970 - china and banglaesh women empowerment

from adb summary document

 Logframe Output 3: In cooperation with LGOPAD, global conference on “Taking Action for the World’s Poor and Hungry People”, including an Asia Forum, convened in Beijing on October 17-19, 2007. 37. The international conference on “Taking Action for the World’s Poor and Hungry People” was co-organized with China’s State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development (LGOPAD) of China, and co-hosted with

https://www.iprcc.org/

 the International Poverty Reduction Center in China (IPRCC) and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS). 38. The conference sessions were designed to offer a wide-ranging assessment of poverty and hunger, as well as perspectives, strategies, and policies for many 11 regions and sectors. The program [http://www.ifpri.org/2020ChinaConference/chconfprogram2.asp] included both plenary and breakout parallel sessions, which allowed participants to exchange ideas, learn from each other's experiences, brainstorm on potential new strategies and partnerships, and articulate priority areas of action. Summaries of the breakout discussions were presented in the plenary in subsequent panel discussions. 39. The conference was opened by China’s Vice-Premier of the State Council, Liangyu Hui and featured the President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the vice-president of the Asian Development Bank. The message of the United Nations Secretary General was presented. The ADB delegation was led by Ursula Schäfer-Preuss, Vice President, Knowledge Management and Sustainable Development at ADB, who delivered a speech during the Opening Ceremony. Ms Schafer-Preuss also chaired the regional forum for Asia as well as delivered the results of the forum at the plenary session. 40. Each day featured its own set of plenary sessions and parallel breakout groups for livelier, in-depth discussions. The first part of the conference set the stage, with sessions on understanding poverty and its consequences, including new information on the poor people living below the US$1-a-day poverty line. Parallel sessions were devoted to identifying what strategies and policies are required to enable people to move out of extreme poverty and hunger, with specific attention to fostering pro-poor growth, reducing vulnerability and enhancing social protection, targeting the poor, and creating and enhancing the assets of the rural poor. Several keynote speakers then discussed the challenges of and opportunities for poverty reduction. 41. The second day of the conference addressed policies and actions in countries and regions for ending extreme poverty and hunger. Country-specific cases were Brazil, the Philippines, Uganda, and Zambia. Regional sessions looked in depth at experiences in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and addressed specific actions needed to take action against extreme poverty and hunger. A panel on the roles of actors and institutions involved in poverty reduction included representatives of research and educational institutions, donor groups, and the private sector. Another panel shed light on the often neglected topic of action to meet the needs of minorities and marginalized people. 42. During the second day of the conference, a regional session focused on Asia was held. The program was as follows: Chair: Ursula Schäfer-Preuss, Vice President for Knowledge Management and Sustainable Development, Asian Development Bank (ADB) Rapporteur: Abdul Bayes, Professor of Economics, Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh  Release of Recessive Hunger Speaker: Yunliu Fan, Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, China  Addressing Undernourishment Speaker: S. Mahendra Dev, Director, CESS (Centre for Economic and Social Studies), India  Linking small farmers to high-value markets Speaker: Ashok Gulati, Director in Asia, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), India 12  Generating Employment Speaker: Tahlim Sudaryanto, Director, Indonesian Center for Agro Socioeconomic Policies and Studies (ICASEPS), Indonesia  Tackling Inequality—Social Exclusion Speaker: Qazi Ahmad, Chairman, Bangladesh Unnayan Parishad (BUP), Bangladesh  Evolvement and Challenges for China to achieve the Millennium Development Goal Speaker: Fuhe Liu, Director, Department of Policy and Regulation, The State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development (LGOPAD), China  Addressing Gender Inequality Speaker: Amita Singh, Chairperson, Center for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India 43. Discussion during the Asia session concluded that there are currently two wellidentified paths out of poverty in Asia: moving from subsistence to commercial farming and moving from informal nonfarm activities to more profitable activities. To encourage movement along the first path, increased access to land for smallholders through redistribution and the tenancy market is needed. To encourage movement along the second path, more effective rural development policy is needed to generate rural employment. Mainstreaming informal employment and promoting gender equality will need to include the following actions:  promote opportunities for both the self-employed and informal wage workers by integrating microfinance service provision, skills training, improved technologies, and other business development services;  secure rights for the self-employed, especially access to credit and other resources, and create equitable policies for formal and informal enterprises;  protect informal workers by extending existing insurance schemes;  raise the “voice” of informal workers by strengthening their organizations and representation in relevant policymaking institutions; and  be sensitive to gender issues and consider women workers who tend to earn less, have weak social protection, and need more policy support. 44. The third day of the conference focused on action and implementation. Sessions addressed strategies and approaches for poverty and hunger reduction, including issues related to scaling up interventions, improving governance, reaching the poor during and after emergencies and crises, building social capital, and improving the measurement of extreme poverty and hunger. Three “social entrepreneurs” described how social entrepreneurship can be put to work for the poor. Speakers also considered how to develop, finance, and implement effective partnerships for action for the poor and hungry. 45. ADB played a key role in the conference and shared its expertise through thematic and regional sessions, in particular the Asia Forum where Vice President Ursula Schaefer-Preuss served as Chair. Other notable speakers invited to participate in the conference were Sukhadeo Thorat, Chairman of the University Grant Commission, India; Fazle Abed, Founder and Chairperson of BRAC, Bangladesh; Kamal Hyat, Chief Executive of the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund, Pakistan 13 among others. The RETA supported the participation of leading policymakers and leaders of Asian DMCs in the conference. 46. Altogether more than 400 international and Chinese policymakers and thinkers attended, including a number of participants at the ministerial and vice ministerial levels [http://www.ifpri.org/2020ChinaConference/pdf/chconfpart.pdf]. There were 267 participants from China and about 47 Asian participants from other DMC countries (Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Myanmar, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam) at the conference who are leading researchers and practitioners from NGOs, international agencies, and the private sector. The conference was conducted in both English and Chinese, facilitating intensive exchange and learning of lessons. 47. The planning and program of the meeting were guided by a Conference Advisory Committee [http://www.ifpri.org/2020ChinaConference/chconfacmem.asp] under the chairmanship of Fan Xiaojian, Director General, The State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, People’s Republic of China; Joachim von Braun, Director General, International Food Policy Research Institute, USA; Sartaj Aziz, former Finance Minister and Foreign Minister, Pakistan; Harris Mule, former Permanent Secretary of Finance, Kenya; and Huqu Zhai, President, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, People's Republic of China. The committee met twice, in March 2007 and in October 2007, to review progress and provide guidance on conference plans and follow-up activities. ADB was represented at this committee first by Susanne Scheirling and then by Kunhamboo Kannan, Director, Agriculture, Environment and Natural Resources Division, ADB. 


 International Poverty Reduction Center in China

Poverty Reduction and Development Forum: Transforming Development Pattern and Poverty Reduction Beijing, 17 October 2010
Address by Sir Fazle Hasan Abed KCMG Founder & Chairperson of BRAC Sharing the BRAC experience in Bangladesh and Beyond

Your Excellency, Vice-Premier Hui Liangyu Minister Fan, Director of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation Chairperson of the Session: Ms. Renata Lok-Dessalien

Our interventions aim to achieve large scale, positive changes through economic and social programmes that enable men and women to realise their potential. The most important thing that we have learned about development – that people who are poor must participate in creating their own solution. They must be empowered and they need access to financial resources. Self-empowerment comes from the confidence and selfworth an individual feels. BRAC works to develop the capacities of the poor, particularly women as agents of change 


un oct 17 2015

17 October, Beijing – A high-level forum was held today in Beijing to mark the 18th International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. With the focus on “Transforming Development Pattern and Poverty Reduction”, the forum aims to address the challenges of how to manage disparities and balancing development. The forum was attended by over 200 Chinese government leaders, officials from developing countries, academics, and members of the international community. It was co-hosted by the United Nations in China and the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development (LGOP).

As a proven global platform of policy dialogue, the high level Annual Poverty Reduction and Development Forum this year aims to stimulate active discussions among policy makers, development practitioners, scholars, and other social actors on how to cope with the increasing new development challenges and identify recommendations to improve public policies for transforming development pattern in the 21st century.

Vice Premier Hui Liangyu, Minister Fan Xiaojian, Director of the LGOP, and Ms. Michelle Bachelet, Executive Director of UN Women and Chairperson of the Advisory Group to the UN Social Protection Floor Initiative, were among the leading speakers. A message from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon for the poverty forum was also read to the forum by Ms. Yin Yin Nwe, Representative of UNICEF China Office.

Many countries in the world have made remarkable progress in economic development. China and East Asia have significantly contributed to the global reduction of absolute poverty. However, the distribution of people living in poverty within and across regions has changed. The world is facing increasing challenges of how to manage disparities and balancing development. While progress has been made globally in MDGs, the pace and level of success are uneven. Some of the hard-won gains are being threatened by climate change, food and economic crisis. The new trends and obstacles the world is encountering are making the rethinking of development pattern imperative.

In his speech, Vice Premier Hui Liangyu expressed that the Chinese government will accelerate the process of transforming development pattern, further promote poverty reduction and facilitate the full participation of poor people in the development process and sharing of the benefits of development. China will make its own contribution to global poverty alleviation and the common development of the world. Helping the developing countries to transform development pattern, creating a more enabling environment for the equitable participation of poor people and sustainable development is a common responsibility of the international community. He hopes that all partners will join efforts, strengthen communication and deepen cooperation to accelerate the achievement of global poverty alleviation and the MDGs.

In his message, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon commended the forum participants for joining forces to discuss and exchange ideas as the world seeks to accelerate progress toward the Millennium Development Goals ahead of the internationally agreed deadline of 2015. He noted that “Decent and productive work is one of the most effective ways to fight poverty and build self-sufficiency. Despite encouraging advances in many corners of the globe, hundreds of millions of people still live in appalling conditions, lacking even the most basic services. Addressing the global jobs crisis is central to changing this picture – to defeating poverty, strengthening economies and building peaceful and stable societies.”

In her opening speech, Ms. Bachelet emphasized that “prosperity to be sustained must be shared! Economic growth alone is not sufficient to eliminate poverty. There can be no sustainable development without income distribution. Redistribution policies are a prerequisite and not an impediment to growth! Fighting poverty is not only about protecting, but also about preventing and empowering. The three dimensions – preventing, protecting and empowering - should be combined in a consistent and coherent social protection floor and decent work framework which should be placed at the core of countries’ economic development strategies. Special attention should be given to gender equity and women’s empowerment. And we cannot be serious about tackling poverty unless we address head-on the looming threat of climate change.”

The morning’s keynote speeches also included addresses by Mr. Du Ying, Vice Chairman (Vice Minister) of National Development and Reform Commission of China (NDRC), Sir Fazle Abed, Chairman of BRAC, Ms. Zhao Baige, Vice Minister of National Population and Family Planning Commission of China (NPFPC) and Mr. Jomo Sundaram, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development in UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA).

In the afternoon, two parallel sessions were held on the themes of “Economic Structure Adjustment, Urbanization, Employment Promotion and Poverty Reduction ” and “Resource Efficient Development and Poverty Reduction” followed by a plenary forward-looking and concluding session. 

Source: United Nations Development Programme