AUGUST 2000

Update on our work in Bangladesh

To: The Global Board of Directors

From: Badiul Majumdar, Country Director, THP-Bangladesh

As The Hunger Project begins the era of the final milestone, THP in Bangladesh is launching new programs. Our highest priority is to empower grassroots women leaders as key change agents for a new future.

In the past few months, significant openings and opportunities have been created for our work, and we have worked very hard at making good use of them. Some important results have been produced in the process:

Women Empowerment: Women are in general mistreated, subjugated and marginalized in Bangladesh. They are the poorest of the poor and most deprived of the deprived. This makes it imperative for us to take actions to transform their condition and also involve them in ending their own hunger. In the past few months, we have taken some important initiatives in this direction.

We have found out over the years that participating in our animators training makes the biggest difference in the lives of women. It not only empowers them to take responsibility for their own future, but it also helps them to help others to do so. Based on this realization, we planned to train a minimum of 700 additional women animators and 70 women catalysts during 2000. To date, we are ahead of schedule on reaching those goals. Several animator trainings were already held during the year where large number of grassroots women activists participated. For example, in one animators training held in Satkhira in early July, over 50 women Union Parishad members participated. In another training held in Bogra, six of the country’s total of 24 women Union Parishad chairs were present. Thus, we already have a fourth of the total number of women Union Parishad chairs as our animators!

We have also taken a strategic initiative to build our capacity to train more women animators. Last April, we conducted a training of trainers (TOT) for a group of women leaders. Several of our friends from abroad helped with the training. Many of the TOT participants are now actively participating in animators training and also leading workshops with women.

In order to empower women to take actions themselves to improve their own conditions, we have recently drafted an information booklet for women. The draft of the booklet is now going through field testing and revisions, and we will soon publish it. The booklet will be used by our animators and other grassroots activists to provide useful information on health, education, nutrition etc. most relevant for women.

National Girl Child Day: This initiative is designed as a nation-wide strategy to cause a breakthrough in the status of girls in Bangladeshi society, and 30 September each year will be National Girl Child Day, which has been chosen as one day of the annual Children’s Rights Week.

Actions being organized at both the national and local level include:

Special Animators Training: One of the most exciting opportunities for us during the past few months was to be involved in transforming two of our country’s premier institutions dedicated to poverty eradication and rural development. In June, we held a special animators training at Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development in Comilla, popularly know as "Comilla BARD." This is an institution founded by late Dr. Akhtar Hameed Khan, who became a legendary figure in rural development for his famous "Comilla experiment," featuring a system of cooperatives, mechanized irrigation and rural infrastructure building. The participants, 7 in number, included both the faculty and staff of the Academy as well as 14 government officials coming from various districts.

The second special animators training was held at the Rural Development Academy (RDA) in Bogra during July 11-14. The RDA was set up in the northern part of the country to replicate the work of BARD. We had 72 participants in the training, which included 49 faculty and staff of the RDA and 23 government officials affiliated with the Ministry of Local Government.

These special training sessions at both BARD and RDA were held as preparation toward a larger training program being planned for all elected local government representatives. Preparations are now underway to train nearly 70,000 local government representatives and the relevant government functionaries, including over 14,000 elected women representatives under a UNDP-supported project called "Building Capacity for Local Government." The purpose of the proposed training will be to awake the participants to the possibility of creating a new, hunger-free future, and their potential role in catalyzing that future. The training program will equip them with the necessary tools and skills to mobilize people at the grassroots for local level planning and self-reliant actions.

The two academies – BARD and RDA – and their faculties are to be used for this transformational training. The content of our animators training will constitute its core curricula. Thus, we were invited by the academies to prepare their faculty and thereby build institutional capacity for the training – the training program that is expected not only to catalyze a hunger-free, self-reliant Bangladesh, but also foster grassroots democracy.

In the past few months, the focus of our animators training in general has also been changing. We have been increasingly going to the grassroots, training more and more elected local government representatives. In June, we held an animators training in a village in Jhenidha district where mobilization is underway to make six adjoining villages hunger-free. We have just completed another training in Rajshahi, organized by the local Union Parishad, where over 100 villagers participated What is most inspiring is that all the financial support for these trainings came from the participants themselves.

Breakthrough in Documentation of Our Work: Since we are not engaged in direct service delivery, our successes are not always apparent and visible. Thus, it is imperative that we properly and scrupulously document them. Given this, we have in recent months started to create documentation of our work. We have already published three volumes of our hunger-free zone activities and accomplishments. We have also published another three volumes highlighting the individual success stories of our animators and volunteers in creating self-employment. These publications represent important breakthroughs for us as an organization.

Enabling Environment: Once people take the responsibility to create lives of self-reliance, they need an enabling environment to succeed. They need the support and opportunities in many areas. Government, along with NGOs, offer many such opportunities, to which people are entitled but of which they not always aware. In order to redress the situation, we have decided to publish an "Entitlement Manual," listing the government programs intended to support the common people in their quest for better lives. Such a manual is now being drafted.

Youth Ending Hunger: The Youth Ending Hunger (YEH) has become a vibrant program for us. The number of YEH volunteers has been expanding rapidly. They have been initiating many grassroots level campaigns in the areas of health, literacy, nutrition, child rights etc. Right now, they are engaged in an awareness campaign on dengue fever, which has already claimed over 100 lives and is now spreading around the country like an epidemic. Our YEH volunteers and Hunger Project animators are organizing groups in different neighborhoods to destroy breeding grounds of Aedes mosquito which carries the dengue virus.

The Youth Ending Hunger is also now organizing an internship program for young students. Under the program, a small group of college students will go to several villages around the country which are interested in hosting them. The interns will stay in the designated village for a month or two and they will mobilize local youth to carry out various community service activities. The purpose of the program is to create a sense of social responsibility and service among the young people. Professor Muzaffar Ahmed, a most highly respected economist of our country, is acting as a guardian for this internship program.

The Youth Ending Hunger has recently started a new initiative called "Adda." Adda is a Bangla word for informal dialogue carried out in an entertaining manner. The idea is to hold a monthly gathering where at least one or more distinguished personalities of our country will spend a few hours with the YEH volunteers. This is intended to expose them to various views and ideas, and thereby help expand their horizons. The first Adda was held last month where Professor Muzaffar Ahmed and Dr. Atiur Rahman, another highly distinguished economist, were present.