The Good Feed: Firstly, what prompted you to write a book on scaling up? Siddhant and Jossie: It started with Isabel Guerrero, the primary author of the book, who worked extensively at The World Bank and engaged with grassroots issues through the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA). Throughout her career she observed that top-down organisations often struggled to reach the communities in most need, particularly in frontline service delivery. On the other hand, NGOs working closely with affected communities had innovative solutions but found it challenging to scale them up. This book atte ..read more

We sat on top of a mountain, staring into the jungle. None of us spoke, but we were all thinking the same thing – how much longer could we do this? I grew up in a small village. I was raised with a lot of affection – and restrictions. Even after completing secondary school, my parents would not let me go anywhere by myself. I always dreamt of travelling for work. I saw a TV camera for the first time during a flood in 1998, and followed the journalists for three miles to watch how they worked. They were like magicians to me – their work was what I watched on TV! I wanted to be like them. After ..read more

The Good Feed: Welcome to the world’s biggest family, Christina! Let’s start with hearing a bit about your background, and what that will mean for BRAC. Christina Chan: My interest in the intersection of environmental conservation, socioeconomic development and community empowerment started in college. A transformative educational trip to Nepal during my junior year at Stanford University opened my eyes to the importance of pairing environmental conservation with support for livelihood alternatives and economic opportunities. This experience led me to pursue a Fulbright Fellowship in Nepal, w ..read more

Hundreds of people died across Asia in April and May 2024 as the region sweltered under blistering temperatures. It was so hot that schools had to be closed for millions of children in Bangladesh, along with in the Philippines, the Indian state of Tripura and South Sudan. Selina Parvin, a secondary teacher at a BRAC-run school in northern Bangladesh, told the BBC “the air is too hot to breathe.” BRAC convened a webinar on May 7 to discuss the multi-faceted impacts of extreme heat, how it is being fuelled by climate change, and what we need to do to respond. Some of the key insights from the ..read more

BRAC runs large-scale development programmes in areas like health, education, microfinance, extreme poverty reduction and humanitarian relief, reaching over 100 million people in some of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries. Our ecological footprint matters. Yet, this question misses the point of what BRAC’s most important role is. We are dedicated to fighting poverty. When it comes to climate action, our first priority is working with people living in poverty, supporting them to adapt to the climate crisis. On the one hand, questions like this point to a positive shift – a long-dela ..read more

The relentless march of the climate crisis is continuing its devastating impact on lives and livelihoods worldwide. Bangladesh is a poignant example – it is the seventh most climate-vulnerable country in the world, and 2,000 people migrate to Dhaka every day already. This influx is equivalent to transplanting the city of San Francisco in the United States to Dhaka each year, placing immense strain on one of the world’s most densely-populated cities. The palpable impact of the climate crisis affects health, forces people and communities to seek new ways to survive – and causes unprecedented di ..read more

“Potato crops are like procrastinating students before exams – they do most of the work in the last week of their growth cycle.” muses Shakila Akter. “Last year, I was a week away from harvesting my 0.1 acre of potatoes when a coldwave dawned early. I watched my plants shrivel and I could feel the shrinking harvest hidden under the soil waiting for me”. Northwestern Bangladesh, where Shakila lives and farms, is known for extreme weather. The climate crisis is exacerbating the extremes, with winters rapidly getting colder and summer temperatures testing thermometers – and the heat tolerance of ..read more

We have a new name for salt. We call it fire dust. Why? Let me tell you. I farm and live by the coast in Patuakhali, in a remote corner of southwest Bangladesh. Here, we used to have all six seasons, and they would play out the same, year after year, in all their glory – Grishmo (Summer), Borsha (Monsoon), Shorod (Autumn), Hemonto (Late Autumn), Sheet (Winter) and Boshonto (Spring).  Now we have just three seasons – a summer that sucks the life out of the land, a monsoon that brings punishing cyclones and floods and a dry winter that kills everything – even mung beans – the hardiest of c ..read more

I went in search of the roof of my house. I found my neighbour’s dead body. There were corpses everywhere – strewn across paddy fields, lying in ditches, trapped under fallen trees. It was the day after Sidr in 2007, the deadliest cyclone to strike Bangladesh this century. I was in my village in Barguna, in remote southern Bangladesh. I was still recovering from the previous night. We reached the cyclone shelter at 2am, after running for half an hour straight. The wind was so strong, I thought one of us would be blown away. Cyclone Sidr was one of the worst climate extremes to hit Bangladesh ..read more

We have a new name for salt. We call it fire dust. Why? Let me tell you. I farm and live by the coast in Patuakhali, in a remote corner of southwest Bangladesh. Here, we used to have all six seasons, and they would play out the same, year after year, in all their glory – Grishmo (Summer), Borsha (Monsoon), Shorod (Autumn), Hemonto (Late Autumn), Sheet (Winter) and Boshonto (Spring). Now we have just three seasons – a summer that sucks the life out of the land, a monsoon that brings punishing cyclones and floods and a dry winter that kills everything – even mung beans – the hardiest of crops ..read more