4 steps to ending extreme poverty

We are witness to monumental
human progress.

Over the past few decades,
the expansion of the global marketplace

has lifted a third of the world's
population out of extreme poverty.

Yet we are also witness
to an astounding failure.

Our efforts to lift people up

have left behind those
in the harshest forms of poverty,

the ultra poor.

What it means to be ultra poor
goes beyond the monetary definition

that we're all familiar with:

living on less than two dollars a day.

It goes even beyond not having assets

like livestock or land.

To be ultra poor means to be stripped

of your dignity, purpose and self-worth.

It means living in isolation,

because you're a burden
to your own community.

It means being unable
to imagine a better future

for yourself and your family.

By the end of 2019,

about 400 million people

were living in ultra poverty worldwide.

That's more than the populations
of the United States and Canada combined.

And when calamity strikes,

whether it's a pandemic,
a natural disaster or a man-made crisis

these numbers spike astronomically higher.

My father, Fazle Abed,

gave up a corporate career

to establish BRAC
here in Bangladesh in 1972.

Bangladesh was a wreck,

having just gone through
a devastating cyclone

followed by a brutal war for independence.

Working with the poor,

my father realized that poverty

was more than the lack
of income and assets.

It was also a lack of hope.

People were trapped in poverty

because they felt their condition

was immutable.

Poverty, to them,

was like the sun and the moon,

something given to them by God.

For poverty reduction programs to succeed,

they would need to instill
hope and self-worth

so that, with a little support,

people could lift themselves
out of poverty.

BRAC went on to pioneer
the graduation approach,

a solution to ultra poverty

that addresses both income poverty

and the poverty of hope.