Bangladesh's BRAC wins humanitarian prize

DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh's BRAC, the largest aid and development organization in the developing world, has won the 2008 Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize of $1.5 million.

"BRAC's approach to creating self-sufficient and sustainable programmes on a massive scale has blazed a trail for development organizations around the world," Steven M. Hilton, president and chief executive officer of the Hilton Foundation, said in a statement on Saturday.

BRAC aids Africans as well as Bangladeshis.

"The lion's share of the prize money will be spent in Sudan to mitigate intolerable poverty in that country," a BRAC official told Reuters.

Over the last two years, BRAC launched programmes in Tanzania, Uganda, Liberia and Southern Sudan and it plans to operate in 10 African countries by 2010.

Launched in Bangladesh in 1972, BRAC has disbursed $5 billion in micro-loans to nearly seven million borrowers and helped nearly 4 million students complete primary school.

BRAC distributed $917 million in micro finance among the Bangladeshi poor in 2007, nearly 50 percent up on 2006.

Bangladesh, with nearly 150 million people, aims to reduce poverty by 50 percent by the end of 2015. Some 38 percent of the population live below the poverty line with a daily income of less than a dollar per day, according to the World Bank.

(Reporting by Serajul Islam Quadir, Editing by Peter Blackburn)