Who We Are : Evolution

• 1972 - The Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee is started as an almost entirely donor funded, small-scale relief and rehabilitation project in a remote north-eastern corner of Bangladesh, in a village in Sylhet called Sulla. Fazle Hasan Abed initiates the project to help resettle refugees returning from India following Bangladesh’s War of Liberation.
   
• 1973 - Activities transform from relief and rehabilitation to long-term community development, and the organisation is renamed Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee.
   
• 1975 - BRAC is the first NGO to set up its own, independent Research and Evaluation Unit, recognising the importance of evidence-based programming. The mandate of the unit is to provide analytical research support to improve existing programmes and direction to explore new avenues of development based on field experiences. The organisation begins integrating interventions.
   
• 1977 - Targeted development approach commences through the formation of village organisations.
   
• 1978 - The sericulture programme is started to generate employment for poor women in Manikganj and a handicraft marketing outlet, Aarong, is set up to support the programme. Underling the organization’s commitment to continuous capacity development, its first training centre is built.
   
• 1980 - The Oral Therapy Extension Programme to combat diarrhoea is launched.
  
  BRAC’s oral rehydration workers lead a nation-wide campaign to teach how to make home-made oral saline to prevent dehydration and death from diarrhoea. In ten years they cover 13 million households and are able to teach the method to at least one member of each household. Today, Bangladesh has the highest rate of oral saline usage in the world and this has contributed substantially to the dramatic reduction of child mortality in the country.
   

• 1985 - The non-formal primary education programme is started, with 22 one-room schools to provide access to education for those left out of the formal schooling system due to poverty or gender bias.
   
• 1986 - A Human Rights programme is created to provide human rights and legal education and legal aid which also incorporates components of social empowerment.
   
• 1988 - An formal internal monitoring system is established.
   
• 1993 - The first reading centres for adolescents are set up.
   
• 1995 - BRAC health centres are established.
   
• 1997 - Development programmes are started in urban slums in Bangladesh.
   
• 2002 - BRAC begins its ground-breaking asset-transfer programme for the extreme poor, and also commences work in Afghanistan.
  
  Over the years BRAC realised that microfinance though a successful, thriving programme, was failing to reach the bottom 25% of the absolute poorest, composed of mostly women-headed families falling on the bottom rung of the poverty ladder. So in January 2002, BRAC introduced its Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction – Targeting the Ultra Poor programme. Using a specific set of criteria to identify these families in the margins of society who are too poor to take advantage of standard micro finance options, BRAC designed a smart subsidization scheme that included income generating assets, training and health care services, tailor made to create opportunity ladders for the ultra poor to help them transition onto the mainstream micro finance programmes. The programme has already received widespread national and international attention and is setting the standard for other development organisations to emulate.
   

• 2004 - BRAC is the first NGO to establish an office of the Ombudsperson.
   
• 2005 - BRAC commences work in Sri Lanka following the Asian Tsunami. A new programme pilot targeting mothers, newborns and young children is launched in an effort to reduce maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality.
   
• 2006 - BRAC begins work in Uganda and Tanzania and also establishes affiliate offices in the US and UK.
   
• 2007 - BRAC begins work in Southern Sudan.
   
• 2008 - BRAC begins work in Sierra Leone and Liberia and formally begins work on disaster preparedness and management and climate change.