BRAC Strategic Partnership Arrangement - BRAC-SPA

This project aims to empower the most underserved and disenfranchised women and girls in Bangladesh (including those with disabilities) to gain greater access to and control over resources decisions and actions that affect their lives. The project components are designed to achieve the following goals: (1) lowering levels of extreme poverty; (2) increasing access to quality essential services for the poorest and most marginalized groups in Bangladesh; (3) creating employment opportunities for underprivileged youth extremely poor disabled people and migrants; (4) increasing economic and social empowerment of women; (5) improving the status of women and girls and reduce violence against women girls; and (6) improving COVID-19 management by communities. Project activities include: (1) enabling 6 650 households to graduate from extreme poverty with better sustainable livelihoods and socioeconomic resilience; (2) strengthening the resilience of 17 500 climate vulnerable households; (3) providing comprehensive health and SRHR services to 100 000 people; (4) supporting 5 550 children (at least 50% girls and 2% with disabilities) to complete primary education with better learning competencies; (5) training 1 360 people with marketable skills linked to decent employment opportunities; (6) providing counseling and legal aid services to 20 750 women survivors of violence against women; (7) engaging with over 1 million people through awareness efforts on violence against women and children and prevention of child marriage; (8) producing and distributing reusable cloth masks among the low-income people to slow down community transmission of COVID-19; (9) improving protective health initiatives through community engagement and communication for better case management infection prevention risk reduction and awareness building; and (10) creating access to livelihood support mechanisms in post-pandemic recovery.

The expected outcomes for this project include: (1) increased use of critical services (livelihood finance assets education health water and sanitation and legal aid services) especially by marginalized women and girls in hard to reach areas; (2) improved services and mechanisms (e.g. legal SRHR sexual and gender-based violence and child marriage) at the local level to respond to gender-specific constraints on rights; (3) improved capacity of national government to effectively implement gender-responsive policies; and (4) increased community adherence to COVID-19 preventive measures and decreased effects of COVID-19 at the community levels.