BRAC USA

BRAC is a global leader in creating large-scale opportunities for the poor. Founded in Bangladesh in 1972 it is now the world's largest nongovernmental organization. Over 100000 BRAC workers touch the lives of an estimated 126 million people in 11 countries using a wide array of tools such as microfinance education healthcare legal rights training and more. BRAC USA is a US affiliate created in 2007 to advance and support BRAC's global mission.

About us

BRAC is a development success story, spreading solutions born in Bangladesh to 10 other countries around the world”a global leader in creating opportunity for the world's poor. What started out as a limited relief operation in 1972, in a remote village of Bangladesh, has turned into the largest development organization in the world. Organizing the poor using communities' own human and material resources, it catalyzes lasting change, creating an ecosystem in which the poor have the chance to seize control of their own lives. We do this with a holistic development approach geared toward inclusion, using tools like microfinance, education, healthcare, legal services, community empowerment, and more. Our work now touches the lives of an estimated 126 million people, with staff and BRAC-trained entrepreneurs numbering in the hundreds of thousands, a global movement bringing change to 11 countries in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean, with operations in our newest country, the Philippines, in 2012

Fazle Hasan Abed Founder & Chairperson BRAC

Born in Bangladesh in 1936, Abed was educated at Dhaka and Glasgow Universities. The 1971 Liberation War of Bangladesh had a profound effect on Abed, then in his thirties, a professional accountant who was holding a senior Corporate Executive position at Shell Oil. The war dramatically changed the direction of his life: he left his job and went to London to devote himself to Bangladesh's War of Independence. There, Abed helped initiate a campaign called "Help Bangladesh" to organise funds to raise awareness about the war in Bangladesh. The war over, Abed returned to newly independent Bangladesh to find the economy of his country in ruins. Millions of refugees, who had sought shelter in India during the war, started trekking back into the country. Their relief and rehabilitation called for urgent efforts. Abed decided to initiate his own, by setting up BRAC to rehabilitate returning refugees in a remote area in northeastern Bangladesh. This work led him and BRAC to deal with the long-term task of improving living conditions of the rural poor. He directed his policy towards helping the poor develop their capacity to manage and control their own destiny. Thus, BRAC's primary objectives emerged as alleviation of poverty and empowerment of the poor. Under Abed's leadership, in the span of only three decades, BRAC grew to become the largest development organisation in the world in terms of the scale and diversity of its interventions.