Bangladesh: Solving the Problems of the Future, Today

In April, Hunger Project president Joan Holmes made her third trip to work with our colleagues in Bangladesh in their strategic planning process. This report is based on her observations during that visit.

When we started The Hunger Project in 1977, there were many experts who felt that Bangladesh was a nation without a future -- a nation that could not survive. Because of its rapid population growth, its tiny land area, its meager resources and its frequent natural disasters, many experts believed that Bangladesh would be hopelessly trapped in a permanent series of famines by the 1980s or 1990s.

The reality is very different.

Today, there is clearly a new spirit in Bangladesh -- a spirit of optimism, pride, courage, resilience and determination. Unlike many countries, Bangladesh is looking forward to its future. Bangladesh can create for itself a future of self-reliance.

An Environment of Breakthroughs

A series of breakthroughs point to this new spirit:

• Food Production: Bangladesh has now almost achieved food self-sufficiency, and has begun to export rice.
• Population Growth: A new international report praises the dramatic progress Bangladesh has made in just 10 years: it has doubled the rate of contraceptive use and has reduced the average family size from seven children to four. Today, most Bangladeshi women say they want only two or three children.
• Democracy: In the past two years, Bangladesh has established multi-party democracy, from the national level to the local level.
• Private Sector: Bangladesh's rapidly growing private sector is attracting more and more foreign investment. A garment industry has sprung up in the past four years, which now provides jobs to more than one million Bangladeshis, primarily women.
• Health: Oral rehydration therapy -- a simple home cure that is saving the lives of millions of young children -- was invented in Bangladesh, and has been taught to virtually every woman in the country.
• Credit: The people of Bangladesh have proved to the world, through Prof. Mohammad Yunus's pioneering Grameen Bank, that you can invest in the poor -- that poor women are the world's best loan risks and some of its most creative entrepreneurs.
• Education: Working together, UNICEF and a major Bangladeshi organization, BRAC, have created a breakthrough in lowering the cost and improving the quality of education through a village-based approach.
• And, something dear to our hearts, it is in Bangladesh where, with minimal outside support, a truly great Hunger Project has emerged.

The Hunger Project-Bangladesh

In no part of the world has The Hunger Project grown so quickly as in Bangladesh. Officially registered in 1990, The Hunger Project-Bangladesh now has chapters in 17 of the country's 64 districts. Every district branch is based on self-reliance: each has its own senior advisors, donors, organizers and dues-paying membership. Every branch has provided its own contributed office. All the branch organizers are volunteers.

At the national level, The Hunger Project is led by a distinguished national board chaired by Shahjahan Kabir, a senior banker. The chief patron is Khan Mohammad Eqbal, one of the top industrialists in the country. The chief advisor is one of the nation's most respected journalists, Gias Kamal Chowdhury.

Volunteers have launched an array of actions. Following Bangladesh's devastating 1991 cyclone, Hunger Project volunteers along the coastline mobilized to help villagers obtain relief and rebuild their homes. Volunteers have launched self-help programs, including vocational training and village banking programs for women, and a handicrafts program that provides income for villagers and funds to start additional programs.

The Hunger Project -- Campaign for the Future

Building on their success, our colleagues in The Hunger Project-Bangladesh now intend to make a dramatic, strategic difference in the future of their nation. In their own strategic analysis, they have determined what is missing, and they intend to provide it.

The first stage of this strategy will be a large-scale campaign of communication, education and action. They intend for this campaign to be so inspiring and evocative that it calls forth in people a new vision for a self-reliant future for Bangladesh -- and the desire to make a difference in achieving it.

The campaign will soon be launched at both the national and district levels. It will embrace both intensive communication and direct action that expresses the principles of the communication campaign: self-reliance, popular participation and the empowerment of women.

The Special Mission of Bangladesh

Since 1971, the people of Bangladesh have confronted famine, war, cyclones, floods and political upheavals. Yet instead of being beaten down and victimized by so many disasters, the people of Bangladesh have emerged even stronger, more resilient, creative and courageous.

Bangladesh now faces the challenge of creating a future of self-reliance. To do so, they must find permanent solutions to harsh environmental problems, high population density, scarce natural resources and extreme poverty.

These problems will be faced by many nations in the near future. For Bangladesh, these are the urgent problems of today.

Perhaps the people of Bangladesh have a special mission.

History may record that as we entered the 21st century, it was Bangladesh that proved to a cynical world that, no matter how harsh the circumstances, the human spirit will prevail. History may record that is was in Bangladesh where people of extraordinary strength and determination pioneered the solutions to their own nation's future and made these solutions available for all humanity.

BASIC FACTS ABOUT BANGLADESH (1993)

114 million people (as many as France and the U.K. combined)

Land area the size of Iowa

Population doubling time: 29 years

Per capita GNP: $200/year

Infant Mortality Rate: 116/1,000 live births

Life Expectancy: 53

Women's Literacy Rate: 22 percent