The TRAIN intervention
BCC, APPENDIX
TRAIN was a 3.5‐year project (2016−2020) designed to address evidence gaps on agriculture‐based interventions to improve maternal and child nutrition. BRAC started the programme in 2016 in the Dhaka, Khulna and Rangpur divisions. A total of 5040 households were selected from 144 unions of 36 Subdistricts from 10 districts. TRAIN incorporated a BCC strategy for maternal and child health and nutrition into a female‐focused microcredit programme promoting production diversity and income generation.BRAC has led microcredit programmes in Bangladesh since 1974. Dabi, a credit platform lending only to women, has coverage through 2146 local branches with more than 3.5 million borrowers. Dabi provides loans to women to increase income and production in agriculture and to promote empowerment. Dabi disburses $1.8 billion in loans annually, the majority for agriculture (60%).The TRAIN programme had an additive design with three different treatment arms and a control group. Each arm built an additional component onto the control arm (the existing Dabi microfinance platform) (Supporting Information: Appendix Figure TRAIN had a 6‐month start‐up period (October 2016−March 2017). This paper presents the cost analysis from 40 months (3.5 years) of programme implementation (October 2016−January 2020). Given that the last 3 months of implementation were disrupted by COVID‐19 and extended until October 2020, our study only covers the pre‐COVID period.