BRAC’s Graduation approach is a comprehensive, timebound, integrated and sequenced set of interventions that enable extreme poor households to achieve socioeconomic resilience, in order to progress along a pathway out of extreme poverty. Although traditionally developed for rural communities, the Graduation approach has been adapted to urban contexts to meet the growing challenges linked to urbanization and address the unique needs of urban slum populations.
BRAC implemented Graduation pilots in urban Bangladesh and peri-urban areas in Uganda. In addition, BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative (UPGI), which aims to expand the reach and impact of Graduation through advocacy and technical assistance to governments, multilateral agencies, and NGOs, is currently providing technical assistance to governments in the Philippines and India on adapting Graduation to urban contexts. These pilots provide key lessons on designing Graduation to meet the multidimensional challenges of people living in urban poverty.