The wider social impacts of BRAC’s group-based lending in rural Bangladesh: group dynamics and participation in public life

Abstract

This study was carried out as part of the Global Imp-Act Programme which brings around 30 microfinance institutions (MFIs) in 20 countries located in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Russia and Eastern Europe together with UK-based team of researchers with a view to developing and institutionalizing systems for monitoring social performance in the field of microfinance (www.imp-act.org). An explicit concern with impacts of their activities that went beyond individual clients and their households was expressed by a number of Imp-Act partners early on in the life of the programme and it was adopted as one of its specific subthemes. Most of the MFIs that expressed interest in exploring this category of impacts had an explicit concern with bringing about social change and many used their ‘group’ approach to purposively promote such change. BRAC was one such MFI.