OCTOBER 2002

Update on our work in Bangladesh

Badiul Majumdar, Country Director, The Hunger Project-Bangladesh

The work of The Hunger Project in Bangladesh has been expanding at a rapid, rather breathtaking, pace. It is expanding in all fronts – from grassroots to corridors of power to policymaking bodies. It is also covering all areas – health, education, income, women's empowerment, good governance and so on – so that people can achieve lives of self-reliance and dignity. Our work, I am proud to say, is making critical differences in the lives of real people and communities.

Here are some major thrusts and achievements of our work of the past few months in specific terms:

National Girl Child Day

As you know, in order to create public awareness for ending discrimination against girls and increasing investments for them, The Hunger Project has convinced the government to declare September 30th as the National Girl Child Day. We have celebrated the National Girl Child Day for the third time this year with the theme: Safe Girl Child - Prosperous Bangladesh. Aside from Dhaka, the day was celebrated in a befitting manner in nearly 200 locations around the country. In addition to 60 organizations, which are part of our National Girl Child Day Coalition, hundreds of other voluntary organizations, many government functionaries and hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis, both women and men, from all walks of life participated in the celebrations on September 30th. Earlier art and essay competitions for children adolescents were held highlighting the issues relevant to girl children.

The celebration in Dhaka started with a rally with several thousand mostly young women, followed by a discussion meeting and a cultural event. The Minister for Women and Children's Affairs, Begum Kurshid Zahan Haque, opened the rally and participated in the discussions. Almost all celebrated women leaders of Bangladesh joined us in the celebration. The media extensively covered it. Many feature articles were written and published in national dailies on the subject, including an article written by Sara Deull who traveled to Dhaka from the U.S. to participate in the first National Girl Child Day celebration. It is clear that the issues involving the girl child have caught the imagination of the people of Bangladesh, and The Hunger Project has played the most critical, catalytic role in this.

Strengthening Local Democracy

As part of our "Women-focused, Union Parishad-based (Union Parishad is the lowest tier of local government in Bangladesh) Strategy", we have been holding Animator trainings in increasing numbers at the grassroots. The training is richly bearing fruit. The Animators are awakening and mobilizing people for self-reliant action and carrying out many campaigns on issues of health, literacy, women's status, environment and so on. The Animators have catalyzed the formation of hundreds of self-help groups and inspired self-employment initiatives of thousands in the past few months. All these are making real differences in the lives of people in rural Bangladesh. These are also creating examples of "best practices" and are providing justifications for strengthening our system of local government, which is now in a very weakened state.

In recent months, we have also undertaken some innovative initiatives designed to strengthen our local government bodies. One such initiative was to hold public budget meetings in Union Parishads with a view to establish transparency and accountability of those bodies. Our Animators have organized such meetings in about three dozen Unions this year. Professor Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank; Mr. Abdul Muyeed Chowdhury, Executive Director of BRAC; Dr. Zafrullah Chowdhury, Executive Director of Gono Shastya Kendra; Mr. A.M.M Muhit, a former Finance Minister of Bangladesh; Professor Muzaffer Ahmed, a Trustee of the Transparency International; along with many other distinguished Bangladeshis have participated in those open budget meetings.

Another recent initiative was to conduct what is called an "Inspiration Tour" of northern Bangladesh to popularize the cause of strengthening local government. The tour encompassed holding rallies, news conferences, discussion meetings and open budget meetings in several locations. Professor Muhammad Yunus, Mr Abdul Muyeed Chowdhury, Dr. Zafarullah Chowdhury and many others were part of the tour group.

We have also held a Roundtable discussion as part of our ongoing advocacy program for promoting the cause of local government. The topic of the discussion was the legal framework of local governance. Dr. Kamal Hossain, an internationally renowned jurist and the framer of Bangladesh's Constitution led the discussion. Many other distinguished Bangladeshis and experts also participated in the Roundtable discussion.

An important milestone in our effort to strengthen the system of local government in Bangladesh is formation of, with our catalytic help, a "Self-governing Union Parishad Advocacy Group." The formation of the Group was spearheaded by elected UP representatives with whom we have been working. The Group is now actively mobilizing other elected officials to strengthen their advocacy campaign.

We have also undertaken another important initiative as part of our strategy to strengthen local government. Last July we took a group of 22 UP chairmen and members to West Bengal to see their panchayat system at work. During the trip, we not only visited about half a dozen panchayati raj institutions, we were also privileged to meet Mr. Budhadev Bhattacharia, the Chief Minister of West Bengal; Mr. Shurjya Kanto Misra, the Minister for Panchayats; and Mr Probod Kumar Sinha, Minister of Parliamentary Affairs; and many other experts. This first-hand experience of seeing the powerful panchayat system of West Bengal made us even more convinced that a strong local government does indeed matter for creating a better future for all people. The experience gave us many new ideas and also most importantly strengthened our resolve to aggressively pursue the goal of making our local government stronger and effective by creating successful examples as well as relentlessly pursuing an advocacy campaign. Following our visit to West Bengal, we have formally briefed the officials of our Ministry of Local Government.

Increased Interest in Our Work

Our work has been receiving increasing attention from various interest groups. Not only have many success stories been published in both national and local newspapers and shown on television, but many experts, foreign and local, have also visited various Unions to see the work of the Animators and the people they mobilized.

Advocacy in the PRSP Process

A group of distinguished citizens of our country, for example, have in the past few months visited several Unions in order to hold consultations with people at the grassroots. The purpose of the visits was to seek ideas for the purpose of developing an alternative "Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper" – an alternative to the official document created at the behest of The World Bank and the IMF.

Volunteerism

I would like to emphasize that all of our work is spearheaded by volunteers: volunteer-animators, volunteer-trainers, volunteer supporters and volunteer youth. There are many thousands of them. They not only generously give their time, efforts, energy and creativity, but also many times the meager financial resources they have to the cause of ending hunger. In doing so, it should be pointed out, they are reversing a trend of disappearing volunteerism from Bangladesh, a phenomenon created ironically by the so-called voluntary organizations themselves.

These volunteers are a new generation of Bangladesh's "freedom fighters," fighting a new war against hunger, poverty and indignity. On the occasion of the celebration of the 25th anniversary of The Hunger Project, I salute and acknowledge these freedom fighters for their invaluable contributions to creating a future that our people must and deserve to have. I pay tribute to their daunting courage and determination in the face of many challenges and odds, and staying the course in spite of many unworkabilities they face on a daily basis. I thank them for their love for the people of Bangladesh. I am sure the nation will someday recognize them by including their contributions in history books. I am eagerly awaiting the dawning of that day.