BRAC - more than Microcredit

From BRAC's history

Yet another one of BRAC’s innovations that has been replicated in about a dozen countries is the Non Formal Primary Education programme set up in 1985. The programme started with 22 one-room schools and has grown to about 49,000 schools in 2004, accounting for about 11% of the primary school children in Bangladesh. It fulfills BRAC’s goal of poverty reduction through access to education for those traditionally outside formal schooling. The BRAC schools teach the same competencies as the government schools. However, they enroll and retain a higher proportion of hard-to-reach children, such as girls who make up 65% of the student body. The importance of maintaining literacy outside the school setting has been addressed with BRAC’s 878 rural community based libraries (Gonokendras) and 8,811 KIshori Kendras that give members access to a variety of reading materials. The Adolescent Development Programme (ADP) trains adolescent BRAC school graduates, both girls and boys, in vocational skills, health awareness including reproductive health, and leadership.