The world’s largest humanitarian prize, the USD 1.5 million Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize, was awarded to BRAC, for helping more than 110 million people through microcredit and basic services programs. The prize was awarded on October 20th, the International Day to Eradicate Poverty, in Geneva, Switzerland. CEO of the Hilton Foundation Steven M. Hilton spoke of BRAC’s achievements, saying, “BRAC’s approach to creating self-sufficient and sustainable programmes on a massive scale has blazed a trail for development organizations around the world”.
BRAC was awarded the prize out of a pool of 225 nominees, and jurors included: Professor Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics and Lamont University Professor at Harvard University; Gro Harlem Brundtland, M.P.H., former Director General, World Health Organisation and former Prime Minister of Norway; and Olara A. Otunnu, former UN Under-Secretary-General and Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict and former Ugandan Minister for Foreign Affairs, as well as four others.
BRAC founder Fazle Hasan Abed said the money would be used to support their microfinance initiatives in southern Sudan, which began operating in 2007 and have since disbursed USD 810 thousand in loans and is targeted at returning war refugees. Fazle Hasan Abed has also been awarded the 2008 David Rockefeller Bridging Leadership Award, which was presented in September, 2008. Bangladesh has some of the most well known MFIs in the world, with some of the first microfinance institutions. For further information please read this Pioneers in Microfinance article.
BRAC, originally Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee was launched in 1972 through funding by former Shell Oil executive, Fazle Hasan Abed, initiator of the project. The first lending programmes were established in 1974 and microfinance is its core component of operations for alleviating poverty. It has issued USD 5 billion in micro-loans to nearly seven million borrowers. BRAC currently operates in nine Asian and African countries. The total assets of BRAC in 2007 stood at USD 619 million and its debt/equity ratio was 384.22 percent.
The Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize was established by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation in 1996 to honour a charitable or non-governmental organization that has made extraordinary efforts towards the alleviation of human suffering. This USD 1.5 million prize ranks as one of the largest monetary prizes in any category, and is equal in monetary value to the Nobel Prize. Prior recipients of the award include Tostan, International Rescue Committee, and the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF). The total assets of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation in 2007 stood at USD 1.0 billion. The combined assets of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and its related trusts (of which the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation is the beneficiary) in 2007 totalled USD 3.1 billion.
By Lori Curtis, Research Assistant
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