While launching its Annual Report 2017 at the BRAC Centre Auditorium at Mohakhali, officials of BRAC, the biggest development organisation in the world, said they have been a strong supporter of SDGs and Bangladesh’s development.
Executive director of the organisation Dr Muhammad Musa said BRAC has been playing an important role in supporting the government’s efforts to achieve the SDGs.
It has been working to eliminate extreme poverty through its Targeting the Ultra Poor (TUP) programme since 2002, he said.
In 2017, more than 75,000 households have permanently emerged from extreme poverty with assistance from BRAC’s poverty eradication programme.
Besides, BRAC provided humanitarian assistance to over 600,000 people last year from the Rohingya community, and the programme is still running.
Dr Musa also said BRAC is focusing on eight areas in its five-year strategic plan covering the period of 2016-2020, namely, eliminating extreme poverty; expanding financial choices of people living in poverty; employable skills for decent work at home and abroad; climate change and emergency response; gender equality; universal access to healthcare, nutrition, water and sanitation; pro-poor urban development; and investing in the next generation.
BRAC’s senior director for strategy, communication and empowerment Asif Saleh said they had provided skill development training and employment assistance to nearly 34,000 youths in 2017.
Over 3.8 million children and teenagers enrolled in the 44,000 schools and centres of BRAC across the country last year alone.
Having referred to the World Bank data, Asif Saleh said every year 2.2 million youths enter the job market, but 41 percent of them are not equipped with necessary education and skill training for obtaining decent jobs.
To address this gap in skill education, BRAC has set a target of training 400 thousand job entrants by 2020, he said.