ABSTRACT
The paper by Salehuddin Ahmed and Mohammad Rafi provides a welcome opportunity to review some of the critical challenges in poverty reduction. The authors contend that Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) approach to poverty reduction was successful at least partly because of partnerships with the government, communities, donors, and other nongovernmental organizations. The authors imply that by working with others BRAC enhances its own capacity to implement poverty reduction programs. BRAC's extensive experience could provide rich material for an analysis of the ecology of partnerships. The message: Poverty reduction is a serious business and BRAC is taking a businesslike approach. BRAC has training and research and evaluation divisions with well-defined functions central to the organization's core business and with clear organizational links with its operational groups. BRAC as a learning organization—that is, an organization that reflects intelligently on what it does, learns from that reflection, and adapts.
