The eight UN Millennium Development Goals reflect the web of human needs that must be strengthened in order to empower the poor. Fazle Abed explains how his organization called BRAC, Building Resources Across Communities, is leading grass roots efforts to achieve these goals in Bangladesh through a multi-pronged strategy aimed at education, gender equality, health, environmental, economic, and political progress.

Known originally as the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, BRAC began as a small-scale project to help refugees after the Bangladesh Liberation War. It has now grown into an international network that works to improve life for the poor in Bangladesh. Abed points out that poverty is at the heart of many interlocking issues; a key focus of the organization's activities is to lift the poorest, those living on less than 35 cents a day, to a better life. The essential means to this end is education. Providing access to primary schooling for boys, and especially girls, has been one of BRAC's biggest successes. Now, the challenge is figuring out how to transmit those successes into the national school system in the form of curricula, materials, and approaches to teacher training and administration.

Another critical issue is gender equality. Women play key roles in so many aspects of rural life. Empowering them through micro-finance, education, and maternal and infant health programs has a huge impact. Interestingly, BRAC is helping to train women journalists who can then be a voice for important causes affecting women in the countryside.

Abed goes on to describe a number of BRAC's other programs that align well with the Millennium Development Goals. He is optimistic that most goals can be met in Bangladesh by the 2015 target, but he emphasizes that donor funding is still a big issue. As grass roots efforts grow stronger, the character of democratically elected officials is changing, he notes. These new leaders should become even more effective in promoting the needs of the poor.