BRAC Uganda (Fire Awards)

BRAC Uganda has set itself a high mark of touching the lives of more than 4.2 million people by 2016. BRAC is an international development organisation with headquarters in Bangladesh. It is the largest non-governmental development organisation in the world, measured by the number of employees and the number of people it has helped, as of November 2012. Established in 1972, BRAC operates in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Haiti and The Philippines.

 

Organising the poor using communities’ own human and material resources, BRAC catalyses lasting change, creating an ecosystem in which the poor have the chance to seize control of their own lives. “Our work now touches the lives of an estimated 126 million people across the world,” says Emmanuel Gyezaho, the communications manager of BRAC Uganda. Uganda is the site of BRAC’s largest and fastest scale-up in Africa. It launched operations in 2006.

 

With more than 120,000 micro-finance borrowers, BRAC Uganda with support from its development partners has disbursed about sh385b ($150 million) in loans to date, he says.

 

BRAC provides agro-inputs with an entrepreneurial push towards sustainable business through BRAC Social Business Enterprises Uganda Limited, a commercial entity devoted to seed production and processing. They also deliver high quality seeds produced at its Agriculture Research Centre in Nakaseke to farmers.

 

Through BRAC ‘franchised entrepreneurs’, the charity is providing health education, preventive care and access to health commodities in villages across 64 districts in Uganda.

 

In partnership with the MasterCard Foundation, BRAC is offering secondary school scholarships to up to 5000academically astute but economically marginalised Ugandan students.

 

Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents (ELA) programme is promoting gender equality and empowering young Ugandan women to eradicate poverty.

 

BRAC is an implementing partner of the USAID funded Community Connector Project designed to improve food security and nutrition of women and children under five in Uganda.