Make Poverty Business

Make Poverty Business co-authors Craig Wilson and Peter Wilson are working to implement some of their book's ideas in a DFID-funded project in Bangladesh. The Bangladesh Social Enterprise Project aims to foster commercially-viable, poverty-reducing initiatives through cooperation between the private sector and NGOs. It is led by the Bangladesh Enterprise Institute and supported by Craig Wilson's organisation The Foundation for Development Cooperation and Peter Wilson's company Libra Advisory Group.

The inaugural session featured a keynote speech by the hugely impressive Fazle Hasan Abed, founder of BRAC.  BRAC is less well-known outside Bangladesh than Grameen but has a wide range of successful poverty reducing initiatives, including BRAC Bank which aims to foster employment by lending to small and medium enterprises, in addition to financing one-person entrepreneurs who are the traditional targets of micro-finance.

The project website will capture materials generated during the sessions and will record the initiatives that result from this innovative project. The project has already generated case studies of Bangladeshi social entrerprises and a literature review.