BRAC at 50: reflecting on 50 years of BRAC contributions to development knowledge and practice

As a Global South NGO from Bangladesh that has become one of the world’s largest NGOs, BRAC's fiftieth anniversary was a momentous occasion for global development. This special issue celebrates BRAC’s contributions to development knowledge and practice across five decades, highlighting BRAC’s impact – and the challenges it has faced in achieving this – across several programs, ranging from humanitarian response to women’s and young people’s empowerment and its quest for inclusive poverty reduction in Bangladesh and beyond. We explore how BRAC's heavy investment in a culture of continuous learning enables the organisation to understand and improve its programs, ground these in local contexts and communities, and build external partnerships for spreading its impact, influence, and knowledge globally. We hope this special issue will advance understanding of and spread BRAC’s strategies of working closely with poor and marginalised communities, of investing in transformative learning that starts with the self, of evolving and embracing mistakes, and of igniting hope over fate and despair.