by lwang | Aug 29, 2014 | Civil Society, Community Development, Kravis Prize, Landesa, Poverty Reduction, Roy Prosterman
Say you find an old dollar bill in a pair of jeans … where does that dollar end up? Paying for your morning coffee? Carefully deposited in your bank account? What is the best way to invest a single dollar? Melissa Warnke, author of “Bang for Your Buck,” an article featured on The Morning News, interviews two dozen people—from a street performer to a head fund manager—about how they would invest a single dollar. Rena Singer, Communications Director of Landesa, a Rural Development Institute founded by Kravis Prize recipient Roy Prosterman, weighs in on the question. Singer outlines the way a dollar goes through Landesa’s Girls Project, a program which educates girls in West Bengal about “their rights to attend school, to not be married as a child, and to one day inherit land.” The project teaches girls the gardening skills needed to create and sustain a home—“a kitchen garden…roof of their house…food that boosts nutrition.” The program is a mere dollar per girl per year. Landesa was also recently named NGO of the Month by Funds for NGO’s. The organization is commended for their work to secure land for the world’s poorest populations and for their inspiring vision of “a world free of extreme poverty,” a vision which earned Prosterman the Kravis Prize in 2006. RELATED: More about the Kravis Prize at Claremont McKenna College A list of past recipients of the Kravis Prize ...
by lwang | Apr 23, 2014 | BRAC, BRAC UK, BRAC USA, Civil Society, Fazle Abed, Kravis Prize
Who are the world’s 50 greatest leaders, according to Fortune Magazine? Along with Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and actress-activist Angelina Jolie, Fazle Abed has been honored as one of the world’s “50 greatest leaders” by the magazine for turning the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) into a major force for social change in the non-profit, social sector. Abed was awarded the second annual Henry R. Kravis Prize in Leadership in 2007 for his visionary work with BRAC and its expansion from serving the poor in northeastern Bangladesh to helping more than 130 million around the world. Fortune Magazine identified the 77-year-old Abed, who was knighted in 2010, as an inspiring figure who is “making the world better.” “After Bangladesh fought a war to become independent,” Fortune magazine announces, “Abed, 77, established the Brac to aid the rural poor, including 10 million returning refugees.” Abed (pictured above), according to the magazine report, is the lone Bangladeshi to make the top 50 list. Abed ranks at #32 on the Fortune list. Other figures included in the top 50 list are Pope Francis, investor Warren Buffett, and former U.S. president Bill Clinton. RELATED: BBVA Award goes to Pratham Nonprofit management: Focus on “funamentals, not fads”: Kravis Prize-related article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review...
by lwang | Jul 18, 2013 | BRAC, BRAC UK, BRAC USA, Civil Society, Fazle Abed, Kravis Prize
Central European University has awarded the 18th Open Society Prize to Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, founder and chairperson of BRAC, recipient of the Kravis Prize in 2007, and the affiliated BRAC University, at its commencement ceremony in June. The Open Society Prize, which is given “to an outstanding individual whose achievements have contributed substantially to the creation of an open society,” has been awarded at past ceremonies to a multitude of prominent world figures, including: Sir Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and its Enemies; Vaclav Havel, playwright and former president of the Czech Republic; Richard Holbrooke, the late senior U.S. diplomat; and Kofi Annan, former secretary-general of the United Nations. During his acceptance speech, Abed described his early experiences with BRAC and reflected on the lessons that he has learned along the way with the organization: “After my country’s independence, I began working to try to help the poor of Bangladesh. My early colleagues and I initially thought that BRAC would be a short-term relief effort. But the realities of entrenched poverty soon changed our minds. I have learned much along the way. Perhaps the most important thing I learned was that when you create the right conditions, poor people will do the hard work of defeating poverty themselves.” RELATED: Landesa offers perspectives on China’s changing...
by lwang | Apr 16, 2013 | BRAC, Civil Society, Community Development, Kravis Prize
Have you ever heard of frugal innovation? That’s what happens when you help improve people’s lives but have a limited budget—an all-too-familiar situation for the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee. The 2007 recipient of the Kravis Prize, BRAC and its founder Fazle Abed have turned such limitations into a powerful learning tool by staging a Frugal Innovation Forum in March. Asif Saleh, senior director of BRAC Strategy, Communications, and Capacity, shared some of the lessons of this forum in a recent article in Forbes magazine. The reason for the BRAC forum was a simple principle: By providing a venue for the exchange of ideas, you increase the reach and possibility of individual organizations with limited means. It’s an old, familiar idea that novelist E.M. Forster once expressed perfectly in two words in his novel “Howard’s End” — Only connect. When organizations in the non-profit sector connect and share ideas, solutions to common problems can be found far more easily than when these organizations face them alone. As BRAC’s Saleh writes in Forbes: It’s easy to pay lip service to the need to learn from one other, but actually how one does that is not entirely understood. Rarely can a ready-made model be dropped into a new place. Even the process of creation is hugely important in developing a sophisticated understanding of not just what works, but why it works. “Everyone needs to reinvent the wheel,” wrote Madhav Chavan, founder of Pratham, an incredible Indian organization transforming education nationally, “it’s important because all of us need our own kind of wheel.” Among the other lessons that Saleh passes along? It’s important to...
by lwang | Nov 23, 2011 | AIL, Civil Society, Community Development, Female Empowerment, Sakena Yacoobi
Regina Starr Ridley, publishing director of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, met with 2009 Kravis Prize winner and Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL) Founder Sakeena Yacoobi last month at the global poverty alleviation convention, Opportunity Collaboration, in Mexico. Yacoobi shared her thoughts with Ridley on the growing sense of empowerment among Afghani women: “Women’s lives are changing rapidly for the good. It’s changed 180 degrees. Women are going into professions of all kinds. But the women of Afghanistan still need the international community to back them up. It takes awhile—Afghanistan has been at war 30 years. Everything cannot be changed right away.” While discussing developments in Afghanistan, Yacoobi said: “Afghanistan is doing better, the villages are cleaner, people are healthier, and people know more about hygiene and reproductive health. Now we need infrastructure support, and we need to develop our civil society.” Due to Yacoobi’s keen knowledge and tireless drive, AIL has already taken steps towards developing Afghanistan’s civil society through workshops on democracy, leadership and peace. AIL’s emerging youth group, which started with 25 students, has now grown to over 200. Thanks to Yacoobi and AIL, women and youths in Afghanistan are stepping in to help shape the country’s social development. “Afghanistan: Update from Sakena Yacoobi” [The Stanford Social Innovation Review, November 8, 2011] To learn more about Sakena Yacoobi, visit our...
