MICROCAPITAL STORY: Book Release: “Freedom From Want” by Ian Smillie Pays Homage to the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC)

“Unlike the Grameen Bank, BRAC (Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee) is not well known outside Bangladesh, but that will change, because BRAC is undoubtedly the largest and most variegated social experiment in the developing world,” writes Ian Smillie (p1), the author of recently published “Freedom From Want” (Kumarian Press, 2009). The 283-page book is a tribute to the gigantic Bangladeshi nongovernmental microfinance and development organization, which today operates in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda, the Sudan, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. Upon a backdrop of the history of Bangladesh, “Freedom From Want” traces the growth of BRAC from its origins in 1972 as a small social relief project for victims of the 1970 cyclone and 1972 Liberation War. It provides a biography of BRAC Founder and Chairperson, Fazle Hasan Abed. And, it documents the launch of BRAC’s various development initiatives and its expansion into Asia and Africa as it grew to become the multinational, multifaceted development institution that it is today.

In Bangladesh alone, BRAC’s microfinance operations loaned more than USD 1 billion in 2008 to 6.4 million borrowers. However, Ian Smillie attributes the success of BRAC to its treatment of microfinance as an integral part of a larger multidimensional development strategy, and its provision of other services to the poor beyond credit: “Four million children, 70 percent of them girls, have graduated from BRAC’s 68 thousand primary and preprimary schools. Millions benefit from the work of BRAC’s health centers, its diagnostic laboratories, its health workers, and the 70 thousand community health volunteers who have joined the effort” (p2). Mr. Smillie also praises the fact that eighty percent of BRAC’s operations are self-financed. For more information on BRAC, please refer to its homepage and to its profile on the MIX Market, the microfinance information clearinghouse.

Author Ian Smillie worked alongside BRAC in Bangladesh, as a development worker for international nonprofit CARE in 1972 and 1973. He later went on to found Canadian development organization, Inter Pares, and was the Executive Director of Canadian University Services Overseas (CUSO) from 1979 to 1983. He served as an adjunct professor at Tulane University in New Orleans from 1998 to 2001 and on a United Nations Security Council expert panel in 2000 that explored the relationship between the illicit weapons trade and the diamond industry in Sierra Leone. Currently, Mr. Smillie serves as Research Coordinator on Partnership Africa Canada’s “Diamonds and Human Security Project”, and as an NGO participant in the intergovernmental diamond certification process, the Kimberly Accord. Ian Smillie has authored several books on international development including “Patronage or Partnership: Local Capacity Building in Humanitarian Crises” (Kumarian, 2001), “Managing for Change: Leadership, Management, and Strategy in Asian NGOs” (with John Hailey, Earthscan, 2001), and “The Charity of Nations: Humanitarian Actions in a Calculating World” (with Larry Minear, Kumarian, 2004).

For more information on “Freedom From Want”, please refer to this link. The book can be purchased online from Amazon.com for USD 16.47 plus shipping and handling.

By Ryan Hogarth, Research Assistant

Additional Resources:

Amazon.com: “Freedom From Want”

Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee: Home

BRAC: “New BRAC Book Published: ‘Freedom From Want'”

MIX Market: Profile for BRAC