MAY 1998

Unleashing the Volunteer Spirit in Bangladesh

By Karen Herman, Hunger Project volunteer and Charter investor

Introduction

I took an extraordinary journey across twelve time zones - from the heart of the United States - to the heart of Bangladesh in South Asia. My assignment? To write about The Hunger Project and the unleashing of thousands of spirited volunteers for the end of hunger.

This journey represented the fulfillment of a long-held dream to stand in the presence of courageous people - those who are doing the unreasonable work of ending their own hunger in the face of extreme poverty. The Bangladeshi people have the heart, resilience, and commitment it takes - to end hunger, to heal themselves, their families, their villages and all of Bangladesh in an unprecedented unleashing of the human spirit.

A dear Bangladeshi friend and Hunger Project volunteer, Mr. Rafiqul Islam Sarkar says, "I love my homeland. I have taken a stand that no one will live in poverty!" That we could all join with Mr. Sarkar and the Bangladeshis in fulfilling this dream! I invite you to journey with me to understand how these courageous people are finding their way to end their own hunger and poverty in partnership with The Hunger Project.

What’s So

We’ll begin by taking a look at population, agriculture, government, and other issues (data is mostly from the Population Reference Bureau and UNICEF.)

Population

Food Production and Nutrition

Government

Women and Girls

Several noteworthy Bangladesh non-government organizations including the Grameen Bank and BRAC (Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee) have made inroads into improving the status of women and girls. However, Bangladesh still ranks among the worst nations in the world when it comes to the status of women and girls. UNICEF reports in the 1996 Progress of Nations that "...the exceptionally high rates of malnutrition in South Asia are rooted deep in the soil of inequality between men and women." The persistence of hunger is rooted deeply in the subjugation, marginalization and disempowerment of women. The Hunger Project’s highest priority is to confront and transform this condition.

Malnuourished women and girls

It is customary in Bangladesh for the women to eat last - and not at the same table with the men and guests. While this ancient custom is an accepted part of life for most Bangladeshi women, "eating last" often also means "eating least" which has serious ramifications for the overall health of girls and women. While pregnant women should gain at least 10 kilos during a normal pregnancy, women in Bangladesh gain an average of little more than 5 kilos - which results in one half of all babies in Bangladesh being born below normal birth weight. Low birth weight babies are at increased risk for childhood disease, mental and physical deformities and death at an early age. Furthermore, malnutrition impairs the ability of a mother to provide nourishing breast milk for the baby and has long term effects on a mother’s own health and that of her future children.

Maternal Mortality Rates

The Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) is a ratio showing the number of women’s deaths for every 100,000 live births. MMR provides insight about women’s access to health care, adequacy of health care and the social status of women. According to the Population Reference Bureau , " The level of maternal mortality varies more than any other health indicator that researchers use to compare levels of development." MMR’s among developing countries may be as much as 50 times higher than developed countries.

In Bangladesh, the Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) was 850 in 1997 - meaning that for every 100,000 live births, 850 mothers died from causes related to lack of proper nutrition and access to health care in pregnancy and childbirth. The Bangladesh MMR is considered very high - even for less developed countries as a group.

Muslim Law and Women

Bangladesh is 80% Muslim. Muslim law allows daughters to inherit from their father’s estate, however they are entitled to less than male siblings. "Purdah" is observed in many conservative Muslim villages requiring that women cover themselves from head to foot, sometimes even hiding their faces. Women often stay at home and do not interact with men who are not members of their family. As a result of these customs, women are less connected to their communities and have fewer opportunities to voice their concerns publicly.

Women and Politics

There are over 4,000 unions in Bangladesh. Recently enacted national law requires that one-third of union council seats be reserved for women. The results of local elections held in December indicate that this is now fact, meaning that thousands of women now hold office. These women are housewives, teachers, some poor, some illiterate. The Hunger Project is working with the government to provide training for these women, most of whom are holding office for the first time.

Although the Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina is a woman, currently, only 3% of the members of Parliament are women.

One woman told me that Zia "blended into the woodwork" during the time when her husband - General Zia Ur Rahman was Prime Minister of Bangladesh. It was only years after he died that she came into her own in politics.

According to one Bangladeshi man I spoke to, women are making their vote count for progressive leadership as reflected in recent national elections where the fundamentalist Muslim political party received only 3% of the vote.

Work, Money, Dowry and Divorce

In Bangladesh, approximately forty percent of the workforce is women over the age of fifteen. Even so, women earn only thirty percent of the income that a man would make performing the same job. Many women have little education, no job training and are highly dependent on their husbands or families for their livelihood. In Bangladesh, as in the rest of the world, women’s unpaid work in the home and caring for the children is unrecognized and undervalued.

Dowry must be provided to the groom’s family by the bride’s family in many marriages. The bride is considered little more than "property" and her first priority is to care for their husbands and in-laws, then bear and care for the children. Verbal and physical abuse of the wife/daughter-in-law is common. When I spoke to young women, several had tears in their eyes as they talked about harsh treatment they received from their mothers-in-law.

Wives are legally allowed to initiate divorce, however, it’s much easier for a man to divorce his wife. Often times the divorce will force her to return to her parental home, or in the worst case, become destitute because she has no marketable skills to provide for her own livelihood.

Girls

Children of both sexes are vulnerable to being sold into servitude and prostitution and homeless boys and girls are a heartrending sight in Dhaka City. Girls are particularly vulnerable.

Although female child abortion and infanticide are not as prevalent in Bangladesh as they are in India or China, gender discrimination in Bangladesh has devastating effects on young girls. According to one writer, death rates for girls between ages one and four is higher than for boys - possibly reflecting a conscious family decision to feed a girl child less if there is not enough for everyone.

In Bangladesh, women’s literacy is only 26 percent. UNICEF reports that the most powerful intervention into issues of gender inequality is the education of girls. "...if girls are educated, then they are more likely to have wider opportunities, develop self confidence, they are less bound by tradition and can exercise their own rights ... ." The bonus is that for every year beyond 4th grade that girls go to school, ultimately family size shrinks by 20%, child deaths drop 10% - and wages rise 20% where women are allowed to work. A Hunger Project initiative in the Gazipur District, which has since been taken over by the local government, is enlisting volunteers to provide village literacy classes for 100,000 men and women.

Summary:

This is Bangladesh at a glance, and while some indicators show improvement - the poverty and social conditions in which Bangladeshis live - are extremely harsh, particularly for women and girls.

The Hunger Project In Bangladesh

In recent years, The Hunger Project has taken root in Bangladesh as a movement committed to the transformation of these conditions and, specifically, to creating a new future for Bangladesh based on self-reliance. It carries out a two-prong strategy – mobilizing grassroots people for self-reliant action, and mobilizing committed members of the elite of society, to work in partnership with the people.

The Hunger Project began in 1991 in Bangladesh when students mobilized to distribute relief for victims of cyclones. Some early attempts were made with micro-credit, but neither the "relief" nor the micro-credit approach worked to the satisfaction of The Hunger Project. Women organized themselves in small groups to get the loans - not for the power that mobilization could bring. People who received donations of money, equipment, buildings saw temporary relief, but sustainability was out of the question.

The Hunger Project discovered that people needed to be empowered to end their own hunger and poverty (including illiteracy, lack of sanitation and clean water) without counting on money and resources provided by outsiders as a driving motivation. The Vision Commitment and Action Workshops - "VCAW" - became the first step in this new process giving villagers the opportunity to envision a Bangladesh free from hunger and poverty. They then discovered that commitment comes from them as individuals, not outside sources, and that their declared actions are the first step to actually bringing about the end of their own hunger and poverty.

Since December 1993, more than 900 volunteer "animators" have brought the Vision, Commitment and Action Workshop to hundreds of villages and city neighborhoods. Over 50 villages and unions (clusters of villages) have declared that they will end hunger in their area and become Hunger-Free Zones. The criteria for ending hunger or the eradication of poverty is based on the vision of, and carried out by, the people themselves.

In 1997 there were 598 animators leading the VCAW (466 male and 132 female). The Hunger Project requires that at least 25% of the trainees in animator training sessions be women, and although in practice this has been a struggle. However, in a March 1998 training in the Gopalganj District, 50% of the participants were women - signaling a breakthrough for The Hunger Project.

A Hunger Project colleague Anja Lemmerman completed a remarkable document in 1997 covering 25 of more than 50 Hunger Free Zones in Bangladesh. These zones are typically made up of several villages or unions of villages. Her report includes surveys the villagers have done, their vision and commitment for the future that they designed in the Vision Commitment and Action Workshops, how they plan to end hunger in their villages. Her report helped me to understand the magnitude of the volunteer work and in-kind contributions that will be made by the villagers.

Some specific Hunger Free Zone vision and strategies adopted by villagers include:

An advanced Hunger Project tool, "Strategic Planning-in-Action" invites villagers to "think outside the box" and become leaders. The strategy involves people planning and working cooperatively with other villages, initiating regional or district-wide strategies, getting the district and thana governments involved, measuring and accounting for the outcomes along the way, and being comfortable knowing there’s no road map!

Professor Badiul Alam Majumdar who came to work for The Hunger Project in 1993, leads the Hunger Project in Bangladesh. The Hunger Project office in Dhaka City, Bangladesh has 15 staff members, which compares favorably to many other non-governmental agencies that operate with hundreds of staff and multi-million dollar budgets. At a recent luncheon given in Bangladesh for Hunger Project President Joan Holmes, a representative of The World Bank marveled that The Hunger Project was working in 57 of the 64 Bangladesh Districts with thousands of volunteers, on a budget of well under $500,000. Meanwhile, the World Bank’s $80 million multi-year nutrition program only reached 6 Districts.

Given that virtually all the activities mobilized by The Hunger Project depend on the human and material resources of the villages involved, the direct costs by The Hunger Project are very small. For example, the 1997 actual Hunger Project costs in Bangladesh included:

Journey with me to the villages in several districts in the south, northeast and northwest of Bangladesh. Into training rooms where volunteers "animators" hone their skills to present The Hunger Project Vision Commitment and Action Workshop so that they can inspire villagers to take actions leading to self-reliance, into Dhaka City’s Ramna Park and Dhaka’s Rayer Bazaar, and into the beautiful villages of Bangladesh. We will see how volunteers unleashed by The Hunger Project Vision Commitment and Action Workshop have brought the notion of "hunger-free zones" to their villages.

I dedicate this to all of them and The Hunger Project in Bangladesh with profound gratitude for your astounding work.

Part One - "No Money"

Professor Badiul Alam Majumdar, Country Director for The Hunger Project in Bangladesh confronts a young man from the southern District of Chittagong. "The Hunger Project has no money for your projects. You’ve completed The Hunger Project’s animator training - now you’ve got to be a sparkplug to get your villages mobilized."

The young man is distressed. "We need money now. The villagers have ideas. I have ideas. But we need money."

This frustrates Badiul Alam. "The international aid community considers Bangladesh ‘the basket case of nations.’ Their billions of dollars of charity, while well- meant, has promoted a ‘dependency mindset’ - and we Bangladeshis are hooked. The more aid we receive, the more we seem to need. But, even massive aid from foreign governments and well-meaning charitable institutions has not helped us to end poverty in Bangladesh. And because we think we are in constant need of more money sustainability is out of the question. What happens when the money runs out or the donor’ priorities change? Charity is not going to save Bangladesh, and yet the charity mentality pervades everything - it shapes how we look at ourselves and how donors see themselves!"

The Dependency Mindset

Bangladeshis:

Donors:

We are seen as beneficiaries, helpless bystanders

We are benefactors

"We need help"

"We’ll help you"

We have no answers

We donors know the answers

Program is not sustainable / People are not empowered

Funds are not sustainable. When money runs out or priorities change, we leave.

Badiul Alam continues talking to the young man. "If the goal is to get money, it will not work. Your projects won’t be sustainable unless you and your village mobilize first. Work with the people, envision what is possible with them, and be a catalyst along with village activists to start a simple project and then go to work."

Miton, a tall, intense young man stands in front of the room of a training center in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh where sixty Bangladeshi Hunger Project volunteer animators are crowded into the room - having returned to Dhaka City for a "refresher" animator’s training. I had already met some of the men in villages I had visited. The women, all dressed in saris sit next to each other in small groups. I’m introduced to one middle-aged woman with lively dark eyes - a well-known member of Parliament and volunteer Hunger Project animator.

The room is silent as the course leader, Miton, speaks passionately about the statistics of hunger. "24,000 people die worldwide every day from hunger and hunger related disease - 10% of these deaths are caused by disasters like floods, severe food shortages and war. The remaining 90% of hunger deaths result from the slow devastating, invisible killer: chronic hunger. Chronic hunger occurs day after day, year after year - where people get fewer calories and less protein and micronutrients like Vitamin A and iodine - than needed to lead healthy productive lives."

"Our problem is that we attempt to address chronic hunger with the disaster mentality and methodology we use to address emergency hunger - and it just doesn’t work. When we think of hunger, most of us ‘think from’ this mindset.

"It’s time to change the way we think. People are capable of ending their own hunger. Hunger Project volunteer animators must inspire a new way of thinking for them to become self-reliant. Then they can set their own priorities and take action to improve income, improve irrigation, build a school or a health center, bring sanitation and clean water to the village. The Hunger Project will be their partner.

Miton continues by saying, "But getting people over the hump - from dependency to self-reliance - is the most difficult phase of our work. It’s difficult for us and it is difficult for the villagers. Everyone’s excited after the animators training - then they get to the villages and say, ‘Now what do I do? I need money!’"

During the break, the reality of this comes home to me as two young men dressed in dark business suits introduce themselves to me and nervously describe a small farming project in their villages. They ask if I would be interested in lending them some money. I say "no" realizing that Miton was right. These young animators think that money is the way through, but if they could mobilize their villagers, that would produce more powerful results.

We come back into the training room and Mr. Laxman Chandra Nath - a senior Hunger Project volunteer animator - stands and speaks about his experience in mobilizing fishermen in his home district of Hatia - an island south of Bangladesh. Hundreds of fishermen there had been taken advantage of by a few moneylenders and were unable to feed their families in spite of hard work. The fishermen borrowed money from these moneylenders to rent fishing boats, on the condition that they sell the fish to the moneylenders for much less than the market value. The frustrated fishermen hoped that The Hunger Project could help. They came to Laxman and asked if he could help them get a loan from The Hunger Project, but Laxman said to them, "What would you do with a small amount of money? If you mobilize, you can do something really big."

The fishermen mobilized. They formed an association and saved money for one year. With savings in hand, they applied for and received a small partial loan from The Hunger Project that they used - along with their savings - to invest in 5 fishing boats that they now own cooperatively. Forty fishermen work on each boat. They are successful and make enough money now to feed their families. The Hunger Project loan is being repaid.

The fishermen did not start with money. They started with mobilization. The power of group cooperation was striking. It was their money and their initiative that to beat out the moneylenders and made them potent investors in their own future.

The Bangladeshi people will have to struggle with the dependency mindset, but once they get to the other side of the struggle, as did Laxman, they discover the power that is inside themselves. They discover that they can effect change. They can get what they need. They don’t need to depend on others.

The next day, I travel south to the Chittagong District on the east coast of the Bay of Bengal - and on this winter’s day, we are warmed by the pleasant sun and sweet smelling air. I walk with Badiul Alam Majumdar, country director for The Hunger Project and Mr. Mohammed Alamgir, a Hunger Project volunteer "animator" - up and down sandy paths in this dry, hilly area of the Mirishirai "thana." Barefoot children in bright cotton dresses or pants laugh behind us and tag along.

We come to a school built with materials and land donated by local farmers and teachers. Even where poverty holds sway, these volunteers have found a way to make what they have available for the good of others.

The school was a small bamboo building shaded by a lovely grove of trees. Several chairs are hastily gathered and we are asked to sit as the guests of honor. The headmaster, a young man, clears his throat and tells us that this school would not be possible except for The Hunger Project and Mr. Mohammed Alamgir (M.A.) who inspired the villagers to take on this project. The school has become a demonstration project for other villagers. Villagers have since planted trees, conducted a health and nutrition campaign, built a pond for fish farming and established women’s handicraft projects.

The headmaster whispers to a nine year old girl who hands me a beautiful red flower and shows me one of her school books. She sold vegetables from her mother’s garden to earn enough money to buy her books. A young boy hands a flower to Badiul Alam. This orphaned fifth grader supports himself and bought his school books by selling the wood he helps to harvest from the nearby hills.

While we walked on the hilly pathways back to the van, Badiul Alam tells me about Mohamaed Alamgir - the catalyst who inspired the changes in these villagers’ lives. M.A. used to come to The Hunger Project office in Dhaka City to ask for money to fund his projects. Badiul Alam said, "You must work with the people first and get them mobilized. Money is secondary." M. A. went back to The Hunger Project again and again to ask for money. The Hunger Project turned him down each time. He finally got the message: mobilize first!

Mr. Alamgir looks about 25 years old. Brilliant black eyes see everything - you get the feeling that he leaves no stone unturned, no detail overlooked, and no time wasted.

He’s a role model for other volunteer animators, and brings enterprise and zeal to The Hunger Project that includes the richness of his own discovery about the difference between dependency on money and self-reliance fueled by mobilization and cooperation.

He arranged VCAW’s in five villages - and eventually got a core group of men interested in starting a health program. Now there are over 200 people involved in skills training sessions, income producing programs, health and education initiatives.

M. A. still talks about asking six times for money from The Hunger Project - and being turned down each time. He finally saw that mobilization of people inspired by their vision of a hunger free village is the key to sustainable development and he has since raised money - from a prominent Bangladeshi doctor in Chittagong ($2,380) and from village leaders (over $7,000.) In fact, he has raised more money from local donors than any other animator.

M. A. says, "None of this would have happened if The Hunger Project had just given me the money."

The Self-Reliant Mindset

Bangladeshis:

Donors:

We are the authors of our development

We are investors, partners

"We have the answers""

"We’ll invest in what you know you can sustain"

Programs are sustainable

Investment maximizes and leverages local resources and leadership

Badiul Alam Majumdar says it this way: "The outside world may characterize us as beggars - but we are rich in our inherent human zeal to make a better life for ourselves and our families. The people can create a vision - the people can create attainable goals and the people can take leadership. It’s a process of self-discovery, sometimes painful, sometimes slow, but it has the power to transform individuals, villages, unions, thanas and whole districts!"

Part two - Bangladeshi Volunteers, Leaders and Donors

A dependent person counts on charity, donations, the "here, we’ll do it for you" or "we’ll give you the money first - if ..." approaches. A dependent person will rarely launch themselves into voluntary independent action and/or leadership, cooperative initiatives with other individuals or villages for a common goal or contributions of significant resources for the good of the whole. They will wait for someone else to lead them, to do for them, to initiate cooperative programs for them or contribute money or resources to them. When I went to Bangladesh, I went with the thought that Bangladeshis are "helpless and dependent on outside help, money, education, know-how." Little did I know.

I discovered that the Bangladeshis are anything but helpless. I discovered that Bangladeshi passion, courage, spirit, resilience and persistence is fertile ground to nurture principles of self-reliance. The Hunger Project builds on these rich human resources by training and mentoring volunteer leaders, encouraging individuals to invest in projects or to donate time and resources for the common good and by promoting cooperative initiatives among individuals and groups of villages. It is very much a labor of love.

In the same way that a Bangladeshi is transformed from the dependency mindset to one of a vision for self-reliance, my thinking was transformed. It cam about by seeing the burgeoning grassroots leadership, individual income-producing successes, cooperative initiatives and donations to community. These are signs that individuals and communities or villages, even whole districts are freeing themselves of dependency and on their way to self-reliance.

It is said that it takes a village to build a child. The more vital, productive and free from dependency on outside resources the village is, or in other words self-reliant, the more opportunities for a child to flourish. The Hunger Project is dedicated to building self-reliance.

Since women in Bangladesh are heavily dependent on men, much needs to be done to attain for women the same grassroots leadership opportunities that are opening up for men. This will not be easy in Bangladesh where societal constraints have limited possibilities of leadership available to women. The Hunger Project is dedicated to confronting, transforming and unleashing the leadership of the women as central to ending hunger.

The VCAW- Ramna Day

Fridays find most Bangladeshi Moslems celebrating their sabbath day of rest, but hundreds attend the weekly Hunger Project "Vision, Commitment, Action Workshop" (VCAW) in Ramna Park in central Dhaka City where they visualize a "Hunger - Free Bangladesh" for the first time. Fridays are now viewed as Ramna Day.

It’s a warm day - and we sit on canvas and nylon groundcovers under the giant plantain trees. There are hundreds of us. I sit with the women, some of whom are dressed in traditional Muslim dress of long black robe, head covering and faces veiled or covered with a black surgical mask. A woman dressed in a sari who sits next to me whispers in halting English about her income producing project. We turn to the podium in the front, and listen as another young woman, Nasima Akhtar Joly, begins leading the VCAW under the canopy of lush green trees.

The vision exercise encourages participants to picture a beautiful Bangladeshi village of small, well-kept huts and surrounded by shimmering green rice paddies where villagers have plenty of rice and vegetables to eat, clean drinking water, a biogas generator and a sanitary latrine in each hut. The children all go to school, the mother works at a women’s sewing cooperative, and the father farms in a co-operative that has just bought a water pump and build embankments between the fields to manage monsoon rainfall. A health center is managed by a local committee and paid for by a minimal investment on the part of each family.

The participants learn that commitment starts with them and that some small action begins the process. Men and women share their process of self discovery, the training sessions they’ve taken to start a fish farm or bee keeping project, the money loans they have managed to borrow from friends, family members or banks, and the leadership they have discovered in themselves and brought to their communities. Many come away inspired to take a skills training seminar from the government to generate additional income for themselves and their families or become volunteer "animators" for The Hunger Project trained to lead the VCAW. Nasima Akhtar Joly not only leads the VCAW and trains animators, but she is a key staff person for The Hunger Project.

More than 800 volunteer animators have been trained by The Hunger Project and many have brought VCAW’s to their home villages. A common vision and purpose inspire these volunteers and thousands of others, ranging from farmers to medical doctors, housewives to members of parliament, literate and illiterate alike. It is creating a Bangladesh free from hunger, free from illiteracy, free from effects of living with limited access to health care and sanitation.

Volunteer Leadership

The volunteer leadership unleashed for the end of hunger thanks to The Hunger Project was surprising and full of promise. I found leaders who inspired villagers to declare "hunger-free zones" in their area, I found volunteers and staff who mentor others. I found leaders who created associations and cooperatives , and those who become successful entrepreneurs and pacesetters in civic affairs.

Rashed ul Karim Munna

The vision exercise in the VCAW "opened the door" for Rashed ul Karim Munna, then a college student who later served on Hunger Project staff for a period. He saw the potential of his own leadership as a volunteer for the end of hunger. But the next steps were difficult. Munna realized The Hunger Project would not loan the money needed until he mobilized the villagers first. So in 1995, he brought the first of several VCAWs to villages in the Narshingdi District north of Dhaka. Since then, thirteen villages mobilized to establish three education centers, a health center and pathology lab was established, they organized an immunization campaign, and the villagers put up 40 percent of the money needed to buy sanitary latrines for every household (The Hunger Project and Rotary financed the remainder). 135 more tube wells were installed for clean water with the same financing arrangement. Soil testing was introduced to prevent soil degradation. Income generating projects began for 65 women, and 47 cows were purchased with a loan from The Hunger Project. The loan has been repaid. Eleven more villages are now involved.

A Member of Parliament attended a VCAW and asked Munna to bring the VCAW to his area’s villages, where 200 villagers, students, teachers, politicians (including 1/3 representation of women) took several Workshops. These villagers formed a committee made up of 21 village leaders formed to initiate programs - insisting that there be no more charity from outside sources! The 21 committee leaders surveyed the 11 villages in the area, identified what was missing and established a health center to provide affordable, basic health care paid for by the villagers themselves. Income generating projects were started (handicrafts, fisheries, poultry, tree nursery and livestock). Munna’s leadership has revealed itself as he became a catalyst for these villagers to end their poverty.

Badiul Alam

In the southern district of Comilla, an outstanding young animator, Badiul Alam took the VCAW in 1993. He was inspired to start a plantation project with 10,000 seedlings, and by 1995 had 100,000. He had similar success with a fisheries project. In cooperation with The Hunger Project, he has since encouraged over 200 people to take skills training programs, arranged by The Hunger Project in partnership with the government, and leased 30 acres of land to demonstrate to others the possibility of fishing, productive farming and tree plantation. About 1500 people in five villages in his area have done 12 VCAWs. They have declared that they will be hunger-free by the year 2000. Badiul Alam was recognized by the government with an award as one of the nine most successful youth leaders in 1996.

Distinctions of Volunteer Leadership in The Hunger Project

Shanti and her family with Karen Herman

Animator - An animator brings to life The Hunger Project Vision,Commitment and Action Workshops to inspire individuals to take committed actions in their villages, thanas and districts. M. Alamgir. Pannu, Zia and Shanti are among some of the most effective of the 800 trained animators. An "animator" is a volunteer who has been trained to bring the VCAW to life, by presenting a vision for a hunger-free Bangladesh, encouraging villagers to understand that commitment means their involvement - and involving the villagers in discovering who will do what in action.

Catalyst - An individual who takes THP work into the field and sparks breakthrough community initiatives with villagers, local leaders, district and thana government, media and non-governmental organizations. Senior animators, have helped The Hunger Project access and catalyze high level government and non-governmental (NGO) leadership. Mr. Sarkar’s high level contacts in the government resulted in a district-wide mobilization in out of which thousands of trained volunteers went from door-to-door in every Giabandah village to spread the word about the deadly consequences of iodine deficiency and how this condition can be prevented.

Entrepreneur - An entrepreneur has a vision for a business or community project, and can articulate the vision and empower others to take action around the goal. An entrepreneur believes that the goal can be achieved, and persists even in the face of great odds. Entrepreneurs are persistent and willing to take risk. Shanti Ribaru is an entrepreneur - her story is included in the section about women.

Facilitator - A leader characterized by excellent listening skills, who is committed to process and inclusiveness inherent in effective community planning and follow-through. A facilitator works with participants to find pathways through obstacles blocking the goals. Catalysts often act as facilitators. Mr. Alauddin is just one example of an animator who facilitated the effective initiatives in G.M. Hat.

Mentors / coaches - provide one-on-one active listening for an individual or individuals and support in meeting challenges. A mentor / coach is a champion and confidant, a teacher, a sounding board and best friend helping people develop their lives along their intentions. The individual or individuals who benefit from such partnership often discover latent leadership, catalyst or entrepreneurial abilities within themselves and have a place to nurture those abilities. Badiul Alam and Tazima Majumdar and Mr. Sarkar are first-rank mentors and coaches in The Hunger Project.

Professor Hannif, a renowned leader in Noakhali and recipient of the 1974 and 1975 Banalgdesh Gold Medal for his work in agriculture and water management programs in Bangladesh is another example of a Hunger Project volunteer leader and mentor who advises all young political activists to take the VCAW.

Committee - A group of people who collaborate on a project which results in coordinated division of labor. One animator commented, "In a committee it is possible to accomplish what you cannot accomplish alone." In one instance, four villages in formed a committee with 26 villagers to promote and invest in a project that converted standing water ponds into fish farms. Syedur Rahman, a businessman and animator/catalyst for The Hunger Project with 300,000 taka ($7,000) they raised by themselves locally from 500 village shareholders. The project has been profitable in its first season with a 68 percent return on investment. Since then, 50 fisheries projects have begun in , inspired by this initial work. The committee is now working on sanitation, health care, poultry and plantation projects. An article by Dhaka University Professor Beyes illuminates further, which you will find attached in the appendix along with Badiul Alam Majumdar’s complete report, Velakoba Cooperative Fisheries Project: A Case Study of A Participatory Resource Management Initiative written for the World Bank in 1998.

Association - A formally organized group of individuals who work together to promote a common cause. The ISWC (The Ideal Social Welfare Council) in the Kishorganj district was founded by 6 animators who organized the association to promote education, sanitation, cooperative fisheries and gardening projects in several villages and inspired village participation to donate land and building materials for a school.

Individual Volunteers Success Stories

The Hunger Project’s Vision Commitment and Action Workshop has inspired many hundreds of men and women to take skills trainings, sponsored by The Hunger Project in partnership with the government. These provide training in weaving, bee keeping, livestock tending, biogas fuel generation projects from cow dung, poultry raising, tree plantation, fish farming, gardening and sewing projects.

One young woman - Miss Morsheda from the northern district of Gaibandah talked about her month long training in bee keeping. After successfully completing the training, she borrowed money from her family and bought one box hive containing 10,000 - 30,000 bees. She collected the all-important queen bee and now her one box hive yields about 2 kg. of honey per week and "sweet" extra income for this young woman to invest in additional beehives.

Abdul Rob lives in a small village in the Comilla District and maintains a small shop on the street where he has a successful tailoring business right on the village main road. It’s dusty outside, but inside it’s cool and the shelves are filled with neatly piled rolls of fabric in bright colors for dresses and blouses, or more somber colors for men’s shirts and pants. The VCAW inspired him to find loans to buy 2 sewing machines. Now he employs 4 workers in his thriving business.

In G.M. Hat in the Feni District, twelve young men who have been involved with The Hunger Project Youth Ending Hunger clubs, came to talk with Badiul Alam Majumdar and Mr. Sarkar about their various income projects. The young men sit in a row inside the health center. Dr. Mamun, the village doctor, sits behind his desk and we listen. One young man got the idea to take a government training for livestock husbandry after his father’s first attempt at dairy farming failed. With Hunger Project encouragement, they both took the training and learned that special grasses were better for the cows. The family now cultivates the grasses, has 10 cows -including 2 that are giving milk, plus 7 calves and a successful biogas fuel generator that converts the plentiful supply of cow dung into an inexpensive energy source! Other young men learned how to raise and market poultry.

They have since joined together to invest in a stall at the local bazaar which provides 1) a market to sell their chickens at better prices, 2) access to refrigeration and 3) proximity to improved veterinary services. This is a traditional Muslim area so girls are confined to their homes. Some go to school, but they do not yet participate in projects the way young men do.

Cooperatives and Donations

Story after story bespoke the profound gift of time and resources for the end of hunger. In disbelief I found that these "poor Bangladeshis" donated land and financial resources, building supplies for schools and health centers, labor for building roads and visionary leadership. Sometimes I catch myself thinking how is it that the Bangladeshis are able to manage their time and resources to invest not only for the good of their families, but for the whole village? Would I have the courage to get up in the morning to face the very tough circumstances faced by a Bangladeshi, much less contribute time, energy, and resources to something beyond my own needs?

Hunger Project animators and villagers in Kishorganj - a district to the north of Dhaka - donated labor to built a school on land donated by one Mr. Ali Agbub - a farmer. Twenty-six men now attend night classes, and the boy children attend school in the daytime. They are considering education for girls and women.

Chittagong District business and professional leaders donated land and money to build a school. The children - girls and boys - work to earn money to buy their school books.

In Noakhali, 300 families invested the equivalent of total $71.00 in a cooperative project for a village tube well to provide a clean water supply. In Kishorganj District, two villages joined to underwrite a fisheries project cooperative. Their capital allows them to lease the pond, stock it with fish, harvest and market the fish for profit.

The Alaaddin family donated land for a health center in the G.M. Hat area. The eldest son, who has a graduate education from the United States, went from door to door in the villages to promote family health card subscriptions costing approximately $2.30 per family per year. Over 600 families subscribed and the good Dr. Mamum was hired. Village families have been provided medical treatment and a basic understanding of nutrition, prevention of diarrhea, sanitation and safe childbirth. Diarrhea in the area has been eliminated - since it is the biggest killer in Bangladesh, this is a breakthrough. Mr. Alaaddin brought The Hunger Project Vision Commitment and Action Workshop to the villages and this has inspired young people to begin income generating projects described above. The villages declared in 1996 that they will become a hunger free zone, and they are on the path to bring their poverty and illiteracy to an end.

Mrs. Popy Rahman - a woman who has inherited wealth formed a handicrafts program for homeless and divorced women in Noahkali donating her building space and her talent in an embroidery and fabric dying project. In Gaibandah, Mrs. Jharna Khatun mobilized a group of 30 women to learn sewing and embroidery skills.

In the Dhaka District, two animators, Professor Amirul Islam, Mr. Zia and Mr. Shaharul organized 36 investors to invest in a duck farm, a fish farm and a tree plantation project. Now the villagers are beginning to taste the success of these program and are ready to start other projects. They are committed to doing it on their own without outside help.

The Exponential Phenomenon

What does this add up to? Actually, "adding" doesn’t do this phenomenon justice. Rather, this is an exponential unleashing of the human spirit in thousands of actions for the end of hunger and abject poverty.

Traveling north to the Gaibandah District with Mr. and Mrs. Sarkar on a ferry, we met a Bangladeshi woman medical doctor who overheard us talking about The Hunger Project and hunger free zone activities and her story helped clarify what a phenomenon is.

She told us the story of a Dhaka orphanage school. "Each child we bring into the school is given a chance to turn their lives around. Fifty teachers work with 500 children each year. One by one we will assure the future well-being of these children. One by one these children will have the opportunity to turn their lives around because of the education they are receiving."

This thoughtful woman spoke with conviction and compassion and it was clear to me that the program to alleviate suffering she spoke of had great merit. In an extraordinary way, her example clarified The Hunger Project methodology for me and I saw clearly that the work of The Hunger Project goes beyond the one by one alleviation of suffering. As important as that is, The Hunger Project achieves a hundred and even a thousand outputs for one catalytic input. The Bangledeshi people are creating a phenomenon to end their hunger, and The Hunger Project’s effective, strategic springboard includes hundreds of examples of individual success, village cooperative ventures, donations of land and material and volunteer leadership. A true unleashing of the human spirit!

Part Three - Five Women

We walked toward a village in the southern district of Comilla. It was sunny and warm in contrast to the cold northern Bangladesh. This was the fourth day of my trip and I felt as hopeful as Comilla’s green rice paddies, palm trees, fields of bright yellow mustard plants and sweet, unpolluted air. My guides included several farmers and merchants from a nearby village, Hunger Project animators and Saif, Badiul Alam’s assistant who kindly translated for me.

But there were no women to greet us.

My guides were enthusiastic men and teenage boys - gracious hosts who had gone out of their way to make me feel welcome. But I was the only woman present in almost every circumstance in the rural areas where one might expect to see women - in the welcoming party, accompanying a tour of the village health center, standing on the river bank talking about a fish farm or plantation project. But women were mostly unseen, unheard, hidden in their huts, cooking over a fire in the back, tending to the kitchen or tending to the children. Sometimes the girls could be seen peeking around the corners of their father’s coats. We occasionally met young women coming out of their classrooms or sitting crowded to one side in a village VCAW, who were extremely shy, but these opportunities were rare.

Unlike many of their southern Bangladeshi sisters, Muslim women generally do not work in the fields. Sometimes a woman would come out of the hut to show us some livestock she was tending to earn income, a bee hive or a small vegetable garden. But many of the women’s income-generating projects (raising chicks, sewing, embroidery or spooling thread for looms) were to be found inside the close confines of the bamboo or mud hut a Bangladeshi woman calls home, as was the woman herself.

There were exceptions. A young Hindu woman I met in Comilla was employed by the government as a health worker in two villages where she distributed information and encouraged use of "the pill" among village women. There were girls attending school and young women teachers in Gaibandah. In Noahkali, 20 low-income women traveled every day to a woman’s home to learn fabric dying and embroidery. A woman doctor traveled by herself on the ferry to Gaibandah District in the north and spoke to us about the hunger issues in Bangladesh. Hunger Project women volunteers like Tazima Majumdar, and staff like Nasima Akhtar Joly mentor young women animators including Shanti Ribaru, Popy Rahman and Lily Haque, a published poet. Women attended The Hunger Project Ramna City Park Friday public meetings, participate in The Hunger Project animator training and become animators who lead the VCAW. They take The Hunger Project' sponsored vocational training sessions for income-generating projects. A recent Hunger Project animator’s training in Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s home district of Gopalganj boasted 50% participation by women representing a long awaited-for breakthrough for The Hunger Project! For now, however, these seem to be exceptions, not the rule in Bangladesh.

My male colleagues and I walked along the raised earthen borders of the paddy fields towards the village. In the haze in the distance, we saw brightly garbed women carrying bundles on their heads or hauling water and firewood for cooking. We approached a small village on a hilltop and walked towards one of the huts, where we met a young woman who had borrowed money from her father to start a successful poultry project to raise additional income for her family. Her story is included here along with stories of four other women.

Tazima Majumdar

Elegant in her beautiful sari, Tazima Majumdar gracefully sat behind her desk at the Hunger Project office in Dhaka. Downstairs through the open window you could hear young children singing and playing games in the schoolyard. Tazima’s desk overlooks the courtyard below but as a full-time Hunger Project volunteer and wife of The Hunger Project country director Badiul Alam Majumdar she has little time to enjoy the children’s antics. Women and men come in and out of the office all morning greeting

Tazima and asking for advice. A young woman, Shanti Ribaru, brings Tazima some sample materials they will buy for an organization of 40 Dhaka women embroidery artists. They speak in Bengali and seem to be discussing what price to pay for the materials. Tazima’s desk is strewn with samples of the beautiful embroidery depicting scenes of "hunger free villages" - women milking cows or tending chickens, preparing a young women for her upcoming marriage, men working in the paddy fields or on the rivers netting fish. The one I’m looking at sells for $100. A larger village scene sells for $500 and took three months to complete. The intricate, colorful embroidery lends itself artfully to The Hunger Project’s "hunger free village" message.

Tazima characterized herself as a very shy person until The Hunger Project led her to realize the difference she could make being a woman leader for women and men alike. She has begun to assume the mantle of a respected and beloved leader.

We drove together with our fearless driver in The Hunger Project van through the congestion of Dhaka City until we reached the Savar thana in the southern part of the Dhaka District. We passed several garment-manufacturing factories in the area, but here, as in other parts of Bangladesh, the families rely largely on farming for their livelihood. Much of this land is covered by water during the Monsoon season which begins in June, and Tazima tells me she has traveled by boat in the pouring rain to some of these villages along the same route we’re driving along today. The van pulls to the side of the road and we begin walking to a small village on a nearby barren hill. This is government land. Tazima tells me that 170 homeless families have called this land their home after they were flooded out in their home districts. The huts have thick clay walls and thatched roofing. There were some small gardens and a few trees.

A group of school children scurry around with handfuls of loose straw to sit on under the sloping bamboo roof of the open air school building. They sit, but they are restless and giggly. Their teacher, Parveen Akahrel, a young woman gymnast, leads her lively young charges in song and rhyming games. Their antics make us smile. Professor Amirul Islam, Zia and Shaharul, three dedicated Hunger Project volunteer animators have encouraged education here.

The villagers hope to get government permission to allow them to claim the land in return for the improvements they will make on the land. Meanwhile, The Hunger Project’s workshops and animator support have helped them to establish the school and get government loans for eight tube wells (relatively shallow wells that access clean water.) The villagers also started making sanitary rings and slabs used for latrines to sell here and in other villages. The Hunger Project is considering a small loan to help the villagers construct a school building.

We walked about a kilometer to the next village - meeting up with some of the VCAW animators who had donated time and resources to start an open-air school for women. Zia said that before The Hunger Project was introduced, the villagers were waiting for someone to bring resources to them. Then they took the Vision, Commitment and Action Workshop, set priorities and seven young village men started a fish culture and duck raising cooperative on some donated land still flooded with last summer’s monsoon rains. The project attracted 36 village investors who bought shares. The project has been successful.

We laughed as the boys rowed to the middle of the pond in a comical attempt to herd 75 ducks back to the shed near where we were standing. The wary ducks moved as fast as their web feet would permit on land, but they changed their minds and headed back to the pond several times. Eventually they made it into the pen. Tazima bought two ducks for her family’s dinner that evening in Dhaka City.

The Hunger Project animators have good exposure to the union parishad, the local government entity. In this area, the parishad supports the work of The Hunger Project and is in a position to assist the villagers to access government loans as well as training in fisheries, livestock and poultry sponsored by The Hunger Project.

We came upon a small shop owned by a woman - Rabbia - who received a small start-up loan from Prof. Amirul Islam. She sells a variety of sundries, soap, canned drinks and cookies. On a 5000 taka loan ($119.00) she has paid back 2300 taka and has a small savings account. She understands numbers and can read. She eats two meals a day which is typical for the villagers.

Tazima is loved and respected here by the animators and the villagers.

They look up to her as a leader - and she is a leader - a woman leader for the end of hunger.

Shanti Ribaru

Shanti is an intense young woman of slender build and penetrating black eyes. Today she has brought her 7 year old son with her to The Hunger Project office. Shanti is wearing a red sari - and her son is dressed in his best clothes: a little suit with a white shirt and tie. He fidgets while we talk so I give him a pen and small piece of paper and watch as he writes beautiful Bengali script - while his mother painstakingly tries to imitate his letters.

Tazima Majumdar tells me that when Shanti first started coming to The Hunger Project office, the staff was polite, but they paid little attention to this uneducated woman. Shanti persisted however, and came to the office every day sometimes hiding to avoid confrontations. After a while, Tazima began to listen to Shanti and gradually became a mentor to this young woman.

Shanti participated in The Hunger Project’s Vision Commitment and Action Workshop (VCAW) and the Animator’s Training to lead the VCAW. Shanti told us that the VCAW allowed her to see that she could be a leader. Her sheer persistence and natural capability has led her to succeed. Shanti started in the typical income-generating "women’s track" but has moved beyond that to a new plateau of grass roots community leadership demonstrating what is possible for women volunteers in The Hunger Project. "Everyone has power inside them to fulfill their dreams," she says.

Shanti is fulfilling her dream by pioneering a clean up program in Rayer Bazaar - an area in Dhaka City known for litter and garbage in the streets. While the idea to clean up Rayer Bazaar (RB) originated with of some of the earliest Hunger Project volunteers animators, many became resigned that the idea would fail. But with Tazima’s mentoring, Shanti persisted and organized both the government support and investors needed to underwrite the project. The project is simple. Four green bicycle garbage carts are wheeled around the community - their daily arrival announced in each block with a blast of a trumpet. People run down from their homes to deposit garbage in the carts. About 2300 Rayer Bazaar families participate in the garbage collection project for pennies a day, based on ability to pay. Rayer Bazaar streets are almost completely garbage free now - the air almost smells sweet. People are taking pride in their community and Shanti is respected as a community leader as the one female member of the Dhaka City Committee in Rayer Bazaar.

Shanti’s family circumstances have improved because of income from the embroidery project she manages with Tazima for 40 women. Her one-room house now boasts a woven straw rug on the hard dirt floor, a new cabinet for dishes and a sewing machine. Her three children have new clothes and her husband is all smiles.

Shanti’s newest idea is to manufacture organic fertilizer from the garbage using an inexpensive conversion process. Shanti is a woman entrepreneur on the move.

Manju Rani Sheel

We walked alongside green paddy fields and bright yellow mustard fields and had our picture taken with Badiul Alam - the congenial young man and key volunteer animator and catalyst for The Hunger Project in Comilla.

Badiul Alam led the way as we climbed up a dirt path into a beautiful hilltop village surrounded by trees. I heard one of the men say that we were coming to a Hindu family - was that OK with everyone? It made me uneasy to think that there was still such mistrust between the Muslims and the Hindus.

A young Hindu woman waited for us in her hut. We were about to meet one of the successful entrepreneurs encouraged by young Badiul Alam.

She greeted us with a smile like a sunbeam and shook my hand with a strength that belied her petite stature. Manju Rani Sheel motioned us inside her neat hut and proudly showed us 400 chicks in an enclosed area on one side of the hut. the chicks are maintained in a sawdust environment that provides inexpensive, natural insulation for the chicks. The chicks made a lot of noise, but my sense was that it was music to her ears. Mrs. Sheel has an 8th grade education and in 1996, encouraged by Badiul Alam and The Hunger Project Vision, Commitment and Action Workshop, took the training for poultry raising. With a loan from her father, she bought 200 chicks. Her training has taught her how to vaccinate and feed them. When she takes the full grown chickens to Laxman, the nearby marketplace, and sells them, or a wholesaler comes to her hut to buy them and he makes a profit. Now she has 400 chicks produce a 2500 taka (about $60.00) net profit every two months. Her income makes a difference for Mrs. Sheel and her husband.

Other women, encouraged by Badiul Alam, have also taken the training and gotten loans to start similar projects. Although constrained by custom in many ways, these women have found a way to take the training and get the loans they needed to improve their lives.

Mrs. Happy

Beautiful Gaibandah - a northern District of Bangladesh - has some of the most successful Hunger Project programs in the whole country. The experience of women here is no exception.

Inspired by The Hunger project Vision Commitment and Action Workshop, Mrs. Happy was the only woman among 12 trainees in a recent livestock/biogas training course, and she was anxious to show us her projects. We walked along a pathway to her village, ducking under a tangle of overhead cables and plastic tubing near her hut to a small barn

where we found her son tending 8 cows. We walked carefully behind the cows to avoid being peed on. A small biogas energy converter was buried in the ground outside the barn. Lifting up the cover, Mrs. Happy’s son shoveled some cow dung into the box, closed the cover and lo and behold the cow dung was converted into methane gas in sufficient quantity to power a small gas stove and a generator for electric lights. This energy source makes productive use of by-products we usually ignore. (Or try to ignore!)

Mrs. Happy’s two room mud hut was simple and well-kept. She was proudest of her small gas stove. Her successful biogas venture showed us all how it can be done, done well, and done well by a woman!

"X"

She signs her name with an X - but that is the extent of her ability to write. She cannot read. She does not understand numbers. This is the situation for 40 million women in Bangladesh. Catherine Lovell

reports in her 1992 book about BRAC (the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee) that 85% of the women in Bangladesh cannot read or write or understand numbers and women represent less than 2% of university enrollment. Illiteracy affects women in many ways - and combined with other debilitating factors that rank Bangladesh last in the world’s status of women, women’s lives are lived in devastating conditions.

It is almost impossible to imagine the difficulties women face in Bangladesh born into a culture that ignores women or worse, considers women as property. "X" is considered to be her husband’s property. She eats last and eats least. She dresses from head to toe in black, is confined to her home, and is tended by village tradition-bound midwives during pregnancy and childbirth. She is beaten regularly by her husband who also threatens her with the possibility of taking a second wife.

One of the bright lights in this chapter is The Grameen Bank - founded in Bangladesh in 1974 by Muhamed Yunus. The Bank has helped millions of the poorest Bangladeshi women by providing micro-credit loans for income which allow the women to generate projects, such as poultry raising, cow fattening, weaving and sewing projects. According to Alex Counts in his book Give Us Credit (1996), Yunus found that "Women borrowers tended to be more disciplined and resourceful - their payments came in more regularly and the profits they earned benefited the entire family. Men, it was discovered, tended to spend profits on themselves." (p. xiv.) Micro-credit loans for women result in better self-esteem for the women: wife abuse decreases and use of contraception increases.

Alex Counts tells of one Grameen Bank woman: "Her dream was to build a small livestock business without her husband’s knowledge - for savings and education and food. She wanted to save to ensure herself against the thing she and virtually all women in rural Bangladesh fear most -- abandonment by their husbands, either by divorce or death." (p.130.)

By 1992 - it was estimated that 500,000 families have emerged from the worst destitution because of the Grameen Bank’s loans to women.

Questions of the Grameen microcredit model have been raised. For example, who really controls the money earned by the wife - the husband or the wife? David Hulme and Robert Mosley’s independent research indicated that men in the family in fact control 39% of Grameen microcredit loans given to women. ( Wood and Sharif, Ed. Who Needs Credit? Poverty and Finance in Bangladesh. 1997. p. 120.) According to Counts, "With the exception of ill health, the most frequent cause of missed installments and defaults among Grameen Bank members is male relatives forcing borrowers to disinvest their business venture and hand over the money." (p. 81.)

While the debate swirls around her, "X" is still the common denominator of many women in Bangladesh. The Hunger Project and other agencies are dedicated to insuring that women’s voices are heard at all levels of society as valued family members, creators of economic wealth and sought-after community leaders. However, much remains to be done to transform the daunting conditions in which "X" lives her life.

Part 4 - The End of Hunger in Their Eyes

Located deep in the southeastern district of Chittagong near the Bay of Bengal, the Makapur village school room was packed with 50 men, women and children. It was a perfect day. The schoolroom was set up with chairs in the front for the guests, tables, desks and chairs for the villagers and a blackboard. The women and girls sat in close quarters on one side of the room - and male elders, including the headmaster of the school, sat in front with boys in the back. A sea of faces scrutinized me, some looked distrustful, some curious.

Professor Badiul Alam Majumdar, the country director for The Hunger Project introduced us and then began The Hunger Project Vision Commitment and Action Workshop with a rich vision of a Bangladesh free from hunger. The Bengali language was like a strange music, and while I could not understand the words, I came to understand how fortunate I was to be in this schoolroom with these villagers. It was here that I witnessed the villager’s dignity, courage and passion and saw their faces light up the room as the vision of the end of hunger began to take hold.

While Saif whispered a translation for me, Mr. Rafiqul Sarkar, a well-known Bangladeshi television personality and Hunger Project volunteer lent his impressive presence to the front of the room and led the "Commitment" section of the Vision, Commitment Action Workshop. "The commitment to end hunger will start here in this room, not anywhere else."

"The Hunger Project is not here to ‘cause development’. You the villagers are going to cause it," he says. This innovative approach puts the power of development rightfully and accurately in the villager’s individual and communal hands. Some of the villagers spoke about the power of this discovery. "Commitment" began to register slowly.

"What’s missing for the end of hunger here?" Mr. Sarkar asks the villagers.

A group of villager "paddy" (rice) farmers indicated that miles of canals and ponds could be used to cultivate fish which would add protein to their diets and provide additional income. One of the farmers had seen this done in a neighboring village.

Saif lists "Fisheries Project" on the blackboard.

The farmers wonder if they could duplicate this initiative.

Badiul Alam suggests to them that they go to a fish farming training program sponsored by The Hunger Project and conducted by the government. A young man stood up with two friends and declared they would get the training they needed to start the fisheries project. Their names are added next to "Fisheries Project."

Someone else added "...and we can plant trees on the side of the canals for a plantation project. We can get villagers to buy shares so it will be a village cooperative venture."

Saif lists "Tree plantation project - cooperative village initiative."

"The government has training courses (The Hunger Project) for tree plantation and you can go to other villages and see how they put together their cooperative investment program. Who’s going to take responsibility for this?" Mr. Sarkar asks.

Two men raised their hands. Their names go on the board.

The villagers were discovering that they are the authors of the end of hunger in their village. They began to see the way through to the end of hunger. For me personally, this moment crystallized everything. As the villagers could begin to see a way through, I could begin to see a way through. I sensed that we were really on to something.

An older man stood up. He wore glasses and had the most winning smile I have ever seen in spite of only a few remaining teeth. He laughed and bantered with Badiul Alam and Mr. Sarkar and finally declared that he would take leadership for an irrigation project that the villagers had been trying to get started.

"Irrigation Project" and the man’s name are written next.

The young women and girls have remained silent. Badiul Alam encourages them to speak out, but they are shy. One of the men tells us that the women have received micro credit loans to raise poultry. They want to begin a sewing and embroidery project.

"Poultry raising" and "Sewing Projects" go up on the board with their names next to the projects.

The process was drawing to a close. There was an undercurrent of activity. You could sense the excitement in the room. Mr. Sarkar encouraged the villagers to visit other villages, to see what worked and what didn’t work.

Villagers talked about biogas production and rickshaw cooperatives. They heard about a nearby village health center where for a small yearly dues payment, families receive a health card that entitles them to the care of a doctor. We dream that in the future, village women will be heard and enabled to take their rightful place among the village leaders.

A businessman friend of mine in the United States later asked why couldn’t the villagers have started these projects on their own without the benefit of Hunger Project workshops? It might have happened, except for the fact that they lacked vision connected to the possibility of ending their hunger and were likely stuck in the "dependency mindset" and considered themselves powerless in the matter. The Hunger Project Vision, Commitment and Action Workshops break into the "dependency" mindset like jump starting a disabled vehicle. It was a privilege to witness this transformation first hand in this village, and it’s the reason I invest in The Hunger Project.

Conclusion - How Do You Map a Phenomenon?

Village Mobilization for a Hunger-Free Zone

Miton and Joly sit with me in The Hunger Project office in Dhaka City. Together we began to diagram the phenomenon of The Hunger Project work in Bangladesh - the unleashing of the human spirit for the end of hunger. Our challenge is to think out and diagram how an individual moves from dependency to discover his or her ability to generate income for their self and their family. And next, to become a volunteer Hunger Project animator or catalyst inspiring others to take these steps for self-reliance as individuals, as cooperative groups, as villages and districts.

Badiul Alam Majumdar wrote about this in a letter to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina: "...an unleashed individual with his individual actions can achieve many components of the vision for a self-reliant future -- some fully, some partially. With mobilized group actions they can achieve even more. If individual and group actions are initiated in a coordinated manner in partnership with the government and other organizations, what is now a vision can truly be turned into reality."

Diagramming a phenomenon of unleashing a human being for the end of hunger with all possible permutations and with the understanding that this phenomenon originates in chaos and defies any kind of straight-line chartable course . We had to start somewhere so we began with the village mobilization model starting with simply, "a person finds out about The Hunger Project. " We drew arrows to "this person attends a Vision, Commitment, Action Workshop (VCAW). " We drew boxes then drew more arrows, more boxes. "This person takes an income-producing training course" and "takes the animators’ training" to lead the VCAW. From there we went on to "brings the VCAW back to the villages" and so on. We realized we needed to account for people whose projects failed, villages where the VCAW didn’t "take" as well as villages where the VCAW was successful and those villagers that declared they will mobilize and become a "hunger-free zone". Miton and Joly helped me understand that a "hunger-free zone" has not yet been achieved, except in Gaibandah where Mr. Sarkar has been at work for many years.

District mobilization

District-wide mobilization presented the challenge of diagramming a phenomenon - because here, certain Hunger Project volunteer catalysts with connections to leading district government officials together take high-leverage action to mobilize organizations and volunteers in the whole district. In one instance, the Minister of Youth for Bangladesh was invited to a VCAW which inspired him to sponsor VCAWs in the Golpalganj District for 1000 young people and the Prime Minister herself! In the Gazipur District, a mass literacy mobilization was initiated with the top district and thana officials by Hunger Project volunteers. Government functionaries not only volunteered to establish literacy centers in the district villages, but donated one day’s salary for the project. The Gaibandah District mobilization campaign to eradicate iodine deficiency is detailed in the attached memo by Badiul Alam Majumdar.

The "Women’s Track"

One of the greatest challenges facing The Hunger Project is to achieve full and equal participation and leadership by women. As an organization, it has emerged in a society dominated by men - yet its mission demands that it transform this condition. In Bangladesh, women generally make it a few stes up the ladder. They might take the VCAW and then an income producing training or possibly the animator’s training, and from there to lead the VCAW, but most women stopped short of becoming village and community leaders because of societal constraints. Women members of parliament, prominent educators or leaders might fare a little better, but with the exception of Shanti Ribaru, few women have made it from the grass roots to leadership positions in the village or civic setting, although some are in the making.

Variables

While we were able to diagram these processes in a limited way, we realized that multiple variables can influence success or failure along the way to declaring, and ultimately creating, a hunger-free zone (which has not yet occurred). Variables such as -

The rough diagrams that we came up with are included as attachments, but the complicating factors listed above have to be taken into consideration as a village moves to become a"hunger-free zone." I’m not sure we captured the "phenomenon" either, but again it may be asking too much to encapsulate this complicated unleashing spirit in a step-by-step description. Perhaps the narrative, qualitative review is the only way to begin to get a handle on it.

Bottom- line, this is what impressed me:

Many a glad day has come in my life,

and I have laughed with merrymakers on festival nights

It was the privilege of a lifetime to be in Bangladesh for two wonder-filled weeks. I am honored to have been asked to make this trip and to write about the experience. The Bangladeshi people have contributed enormously to me in a way that has allowed me in turn to speak about The Hunger Project from a new depth of understanding and love.

The opportunity to invest in this work is a remarkable gift we can give to ourselves. As an investor in the work of The Hunger Project and someone who is clear about the privilege it is to invest in The Hunger Project, I invite you to invest with me. The Bangladeshis don’t "need" our money, and our money will strengthen and make lighter to the work at hand.

Badiul Alam Majumdar’s son, Mahbub, said it this way:

"Whether or not each of you gives your money ... we in Bangladesh will end hunger. Lalita Banavali and The Hunger Project-India and the people of India will end hunger in India. And my father and The Hunger Project-Bangladesh and the people of Bangladesh will end hunger in Bangladesh. Now, I think that it’s neat to be part of that, and you each have that chance. But you should know that India and Bangladesh will end their hunger."

"Sonar Bangla" - Golden Bangladesh! You are in my heart.