Rural Microfinance

For 12 years, Jackson and Associates served as Canadian Executing Agency for CIDA’s Rural Bittaheen Institution Program and its predecessor project, which provided microloans for some 500,000 landless borrowers in 16,000 local societies across Bangladesh. Seventy percent of the borrowers were women. CIDA contributed nearly $60 million to this program, which was also CIDA’s largest training intervention and was responsible for an estimated five million training days for program personnel.

During the firm’s tenure, this program cycled more than $200 million in credit to landless borrowers throughout Bangladesh, benefiting some two million household members.

From 2000 to 2003, Jackson and Associates led an effort to transfer this program, previously run by a parastatal agency, to a private, performance-oriented foundation operating at arm’s length from government. In mid 2000, the President and the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, the State Minister for Rural Development and Cooperatives, and the Canadian High Commissioner officially launched the new Palli Darido Bimochon Foundation. Established by an Act of Parliament, this autonomous and self-sustaining microcredit institution has become an important tool in the fight against poverty in Bangladesh.

In 2002, our video documentary of the Foundation’s genesis won the Silver Award at the Houston Film Festival. In late 2004 a case study of the project was published by Marcel Dekker in the Development Policy Studies Handbook.

Lead Consultant: Dal Brodhead