BRAC social enterprises are socially responsible, for-profit organisations dedicated to scaling impactful and sustainable social enterprises across Asia and Africa. We support people living in poverty to become producers, artisans and suppliers, connect micro and small entrepreneurs to markets, and build value chains where they do not exist. We focus on creating livelihoods for women, and many of our ventures have now grown to become market leaders in their sectors. Each enterprise tackles a social need, and re-invests profits to drive deeper, long-term change for people living in poverty.
Our History
Starting as a small relief organisation to support the immediate needs of war refugees, BRAC soon realised that long-term development would not follow if people and villages were not self-reliant.
And so, money was lent to people to become producers, entrepreneurs and farmers. In 1978, Aarong was started, to create livelihood opportunities for women, ensuring they got fair prices for their craft. Surplus was always directed back to the development programmes. Money was lent to pay for cows. This meant fresh milk and spare to sell. The cows became household dairies and then a nationwide distribution business for farmers – the birth of BRAC Dairy. Maize cultivation was introduced to ensure poultry feed, then the setting up of large scale feed mills, hatcheries, and connecting poultry farmers with urban markets. Money became seeds, which were turned into crops. It became silk farming, which was turned into clothes. It became schools for non-formal education and low-cost healthcare.
From Aarong in Bangladesh, one of the biggest brands employing 87,000 artisans, to childcare centres in Tanzania, our social enterprises prove that business can be a force for lasting good.
SOCIAL ENTERPRISES IN BRAC INTERNATIONAL
BRAC Social Business Enterprises Uganda Limited
Delivering certified, high-quality seeds to strengthen smallholder farming and agricultural resilience in Uganda.
BRAC Enterprises Tanzania Limited
Expanding access to affordable and quality early childhood development in Tanzania.
FEATURED SOCIAL ENTERPRISES
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Aarong
Discover how Aarong, one of BRAC’s biggest social enterprises, transforms traditional craftsmanship into sustainable livelihoods for more than 87,000 artisans — 85% of them women.
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Aarong Dairy
Founded to ensure fair prices for rural dairy farmers, Aarong Dairy supports over 35,000 producers across Bangladesh – by building a nationwide cold chain and processing more than 180,000 liters of milk daily.
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BRAC Seed and Agro
One of South Asia’s largest providers of high quality seeds, BRAC Seed & Agro supports farmers to increase yields, improve nutrition, and build climate resilience.
OUR APPROACH
OUR STORIES
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Local looms, global dreams
Tamara Hasan Abed, Managing Director of BRAC’s social enterprises, explains how Aarong’s mission-driven model and the world’s largest craft store in Dhanmondi showcase sustainable fashion, ethical sourcing, and community empowerment.
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Is bigger better?
From the large glass window of his modern, well-lit and spacious offices 19 floors above Dhaka, Bangladesh, Fazle Hasan Abed, a former executive for Shell Oil, can keep tabs on nearby Korail, a dense slum of 60,000 people living in single-story mud, aluminum and bamboo shacks, some built on thin stilts over the brackish water of an urban lake. Abed, 72, has more than a little interest in the slum. The organization he founded in 1972, BRAC, the largest antipoverty group in the world, with 110,000 paid employees and a $482 million annual budget, has its hands everywhere in Korail.
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Study by Harvard Business School: BRAC in 2020
In 2020, the largest non-governmental organization in the world, BRAC, headquartered in Dhaka, Bangladesh, has some big problems to tackle. Its founder, Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, has left behind a challenge: take the 1981-founded organization from Bangladesh to every single part of the world and create a global set of programs and program heads. Active in education, health, microfinance and poverty alleviation, BRAC is also entering the humanitarian and relief world through its work with Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh. What will be the way forward for this global NGO based in the South?