Developing non-craft employment for women in Bangladesh

The focus of BRAC"s women"s program (a parallel program for men exists) is to organize women into cooperative groups which, with training, extension, credit, and logistics assistance from BRAC, are able to plan and manage their own social and economic activities. Shifting its focus from an initial and misguided attempt to train women for "women"s work," such as tailoring, to training women in productive and commercial skills, BRAC in the past 10 years has organized 20,000 women into over 800 active working groups and involved 10,000 of these women in viable economic schemes in the areas of horticulture, animal husbandry, poultry rearing, fish culture, rice processing, silk culture, and agriculture. After citing testimonies from individual women on the economic, social, and personal impacts of the BRAC program, the report concludes by listing 11 lessons therefrom.