Bermuda Triangle of economic empowerment

Read my review of the conversations, sharing and  learning that went on at the SEEP Network Annual Conference and find out what the Bermuda Triangle of economic empowerment is all about.

I presented Practical Action’s Bangladesh work in one of the Vulnerable Populations workshops. Alison Griffith and Lucho Osorio were also at the conference, presenting  lessons of engaging with the national level private sector in Nepal and managing complexity in market development, respectively.

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A man’s world: ending violence against women in Bangladesh

I’m a 24 year old woman. I was born in Switzerland, but have spent the rest of my life here in the UK. I don’t have children. I’m not married. And I feel no social or cultural pressure to undertake these things. The geography of my birth means that the choices I make with my life are my own. Not those of my family, or community, or anyone else. I feel safe.

Aroti lives in Bangladesh and is also 24. At the age of 17 she embarked on a marriage which is already over because of the horrendous physical abuse she suffered at the hands of her husband. Now Aroti makes her home with her parents again. And as a single, pregnant woman, she was ostracized by her community.

Practical Action works closely with some of the world’s poorest people, helping them to use simple technology to fight poverty and injustice, building a better, more beautiful world. We have been in Bangladesh’s Magura district since 2007, helping the most marginalised of people – like Aroti – to learn new skills and use new tools to enable them to earn proper livings.

Aroti was already a talented dressmaker when we met her so we helped her to buy a sewing machine. This tool meant Aroti was able to sew her way to a better life. She developed relationships with local shops and established a strong foothold in the local market. We trained Aroti on business skills such as accountancy and marketing. Now her business is more successful than ever, with her monthly income as much as £32. She is happier and safer now than she has ever been. Her economic empowerment means that for the first time she has control over her own body and her own life.

Of course Aroti is just one person. According to the UN, 47% of Bangladesh’s women endure domestic violence, rape and even murder due to the dominance of the patriarchal systems. There are so many more women who need the skills and tools to make independent livings so they are not compelled to remain in dangerous relationships. But it doesn’t just stop there. We need to advocate at the very highest levels – until the world is a place where violence from women is socially unacceptable. Where rape of a woman by her husband is illegal everywhere. A world where it’s as safe to be a woman as it is to be a man.

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Bangladesh Heart Ache

This week’s Independent on Sunday article has stirred up some real heart ache for me. Just over a year ago I was in Bangladesh for Practical Action, helping to make some of the videos about people who could benefit from our technologies. I have been out talking about my visit to many people since. There are three things that stand out in my memory.

Firstly there was the lack of hope. People I met were completely resigned to their fate. They had been worn down by the annual flooding and loss of belongings. In many developing countries it can be a surprise at how optimistic people are when they have so little, but in this case the people living on the river banks saw no reason to hope for any improvements in their lives.

Secondly there was the use of the word “starvation”. It’s a word we usually associate with famine, or drought. But in Bangladesh some of the people I met had to starve for days – not because there was no food, but because they didn’t have the money to afford it. This was usually because their casual work in the fields was not possible during the time of the flood.

Thirdly, it was amazing how a tiny, cheap intervention could make all the difference for people. For some people it was being given a couple of ducklings and some training. For someone else it was being taught how to grow pumpkins on the river bank. For yet another person it was to be given some baby fish and the ability to build their own fish cage. These interventions, which cost only a few taka, gave people a breathing space and enough resource to get themselves to a better place. It gave them an ability to take charge of their own lives and secure a way of getting themselves out of poverty. Some of the people I met had benefitted from a project two or three years earlier and were now making a small profit and able to share their money or their fish with others in the community.

So thank you to the Independent on Sunday for reminding me of these feelings – and more importantly, thank you for bringing it to the attention of thousands more of your readers!

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Drama to make a Difference: Raising agricultural awareness through theatre in Bangladesh

I like community theatre. Over the past couple of months I’ve seen amateur performances of Amadeus and Lady Windermere’s Fan. The former in particular was great. But what I saw last night was something else!

In the playing field of a rural upper school in the Sirajgunj district of Bangladesh, a troupe put on a drama about good practices in small scale agriculture to a packed out local crowd. By a conservative estimate at least 400 children and adults of all ages, women and men, came from nearby villages to laugh (a lot) and sigh (not cry, although the wedding scene I must admit was quite touching) while learning about how to improve their cattle rearing, vegetable farming, and pond fishing.

It was part of Practical Action Bangladesh’s Making Agriculture and Market Systems Work for Landless, Marginal and Smallholder Farmers project, which is funded by the European Commission. Through the project Practical Action is already helping 15,000 farmers and 300 micro enterprises directly, but in order to reach even greater scale, the team is raising awareness much more widely through the region with activities ranging from agriculture fairs to community-based drama shows like the one I was lucky enough to catch.

It was really something special! My Bangla isn’t up to scratch so I didn’t catch every word (Read: my Bangla doesn’t exist and I didn’t understand a word) but the slapstick comedy, hilarious characters, touching story, and important messages were easy to see. The show had everything: music and dance, advice about cattle vaccinations, stick-on beards, tips on how much and when to fertilise your vegetable crop, a crazy old match-maker, how many fry (baby fish) to put in your pond cage, over-sized sun-glasses…

I was particularly pleased to see lots of women standing together enjoying the show. Often kept away from public gatherings by cultural norms, women make up the majority of livestock carers in Bangladesh. So getting these messages to them is particularly important.

The evening went down a storm. And that’s a great sign that people will talk about it in weeks and months to come, remember and share its lessons with others.

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A ladder out of poverty

Just speaking with Veena, our country director in Bangladesh. She talked about the new Shiree project (Shiree means ladder in Bangla)  How it has taken up the challenge of ending extreme poverty in Bangladesh and ultimately, through sharing knowledge and learning, help end poverty even beyond Bangladesh.

We started working on this last year building on our successful work in Gaibandha. So far we have made good progress targeting the extreme poor who even in Bangladesh slip though the net. We have not only identified the people but what they need in order to escape from poverty – for example, recognising the importance of small scale agriculture, growing crops, rearing animals, floating gardens or providing more ‘land’. This is work we have already started and which is showing dramatic results.

We have started to build a ladder out of poverty for the poorest people in Bangladesh.  Let’s continue to build.

Looking forward to 2011 Veena’s hopes for the project are that

• 16,000 poor families, more than 50,000 people, will escape extreme poverty
• they will have ways of getting enough food and money to pay for vital things like education and medicines
• beyond this, when disaster strikes extreme poor people in Bangladesh, as it does regularly, they will be better able to cope – in Veena’s words be ‘more resilient to disasters’.

We have started to build a ladder out of poverty, let’s continue to help people climb!

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Flood resistant incomes in Bangladesh *UPDATE*

Paul Smith Lomas, Practical Action’s International Director, updates us on his recent trip to Bangladesh and the inspirational people he met whilst visiting our Shiree project:

From our base in Rangpur, I made my way north, through a lush landscape of swaying palm trees, wide lagoons and majestic rivers.  It seemed idyllic.  But behind this beauty lies a harsh and seemingly perpetual struggle for thousands of vulnerable families who do not have the means to earn a living.  Through our ‘Shiree’ project we are endeavouring to reach out to some of the poorest people in Bangladesh – the most marginalized women, men and children who have nowhere else to turn.

One of these people is Labonya.  Labonya is a widow, and lives on a sandbank, with not land of her own and no way of earning a reliable income.  Last year we showed her how to grow pumpkins on the sandy river banks, an ancient technique that Practical Action has helped to develop into something that can be used today.  From this, she harvested over 600 pumpkins!  The vast crop provided Labonya’s family with nutritious food during the lean season, and surplus produce to sell at market.  With her profits Labonya purchased two goats and their young kids, which she now hopes to breed.  When I met her, she had several pumpkins left and was planning to use their seeds to cultivate even more next year.  Perhaps the most exciting part of all this was how inspired and motivated Labonya was.  She now believes she will be able to move out of her poverty and transform her life.

Not everyone in this project is growing pumpkins.  Crucially, we give people fifteen different livelihood options and everyone can choose the most appropriate solution according to individual circumstances.  Regardless of the choice though, we deliver sufficient training and source the initial supplies to give people a good start on the path out of poverty.

Amodita was another of the many courageous and resourceful women who inspired me.  She has been made homeless by relentless flooding eight times.  When the rains descend she is forced to search desperately for a new place to live.  For many months last year she only had enough food to feed her family for one meal a day, and resorted to begging in order to survive.  Thanks to our ‘Shiree’ project, we have trained Amodita in duck rearing.  Now she is selling eggs in the market each week, and can earn enough money to buy food to feed her children!

There are tens of thousands, of people like Amodita and Labonya, each with their own story to tell.  We are committed to helping even more people next year.  As Nazmul, the local Practical Action Project Manager explained to me, ‘It’s simply a matter of money’.  We have proven ways in which people can break out of poverty; we just need the money to make a difference.

If you want your money to make that difference in Bangladesh and other countries, please visit our donation page.

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Flood resistant incomes in Bangladesh

In Bangladesh, flooding is an annual event, not something that happens occasionally, as it does in many parts of the world.  In a normal year almost 20% of the country will be underwater.  In a bad year, more than half the country might be flooded.

Many people live in places which will definitely flood in the next year, or two.  They simply don’t have the choice to move somewhere else, and if they own no land, they usually have to rely on income as a daily labourer on someone else’s farm.  Wages can be extremely low, and during some parts of the year, there may be no work at all.  This can leave people in a trap of extreme poverty, which it’s almost impossible to break out of. 

Working with groups of extremely poor people, Practical Action, have helped to identify a number of ways in which, with a small amount of training, and initial investment, even people with no access to land, can earn a living

Some of them, like rearing cattle, are not new but we are helping producer groups, for example a group of women in Sirajgong, to learn best practice in animal husbandry; build low cost cattle shelters; and negotiate better prices to help them maximize income.  Others are new ideas, or clever adaptations of existing ideas, like rearing fish in cages which can be kept in common waters; or growing pumpkins on the sandy flood plains, or growing vegetables on floating gardens, built out of water hyacinth & bamboo.

There isn’t one simple answer to give everyone living in the flood plains a flood resistant income, but in each of these stories, Practical Action is proving that there are viable options.  We just need to spend time thinking about what people do have, and what they can do, rather than what they don’t, and can’t.

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The view from Bangladesh

As the UN climate change talks open in Copenhagen, Veena Khaleque, director of Practical Action Bangladesh, explains why the developing world needs a fair, ambitious and effective deal that will end climate injustice and avert the worst impacts of climate change.

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Floods!

So I’m back in the UK. News here is dominated by the torrential rain and flooding in Cumbria. One police officer has lost his life and hundreds are having to live in emergency accommodation. When something like this happens close to home you can’t help feeling sorry for the people involved. Your heart and mind is with the people who are having such a terrible time.

On the TV last night were pictures of Gordon Brown visiting the area. Giving £1million in assistance. Some people were arguing that more could have been done to prevent the flooding, Others argues that it was so exceptional that to take prevention measures would not be cost effective, which leads to the question what price do you put on lives and people’s security?

Reflecting on this with the Bangladesh visit behind me leads to a few thoughts. In the places I have visited tens of thousands of people are faced with moving every year as the floods come and their riverbank erodes. I have met only a handful, but in all more than a million people altogether are directly affected by river bank erosion. What price would we put on their lives and security, and why should it be less than people living in Cumbria?

For the people in Bangladesh there is no safety net. There are some food handouts when the floods come, but there is no certainty that they will reach everyone. There is no insurance – the people who we met could not possibly afford anything like this. And there is no security – people in Bangladesh simply do not know whether they, and their families will survive the next flood, whether they will have a home to go back to or any belongings. Of course this doesn’t in any way mean that the people of Cumbria have it easy, but it’s a very sobering reflection.

And one more though before signing off. Some people have been linking the flood in Cumbria to climate change. It is generally accepted that the floods in Bangladesh are getting worse and more frequent as a result of climate change. Next month world leaders gather in Copenhagen to try and reach a new climate change deal, I can only hope that for the sake of the people I have met on this visit an effective and ambitious deal is reached, so that maybe their problems will become slightly less each year, instead of slightly greater!

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Home sweet home

Well not quite home yet – but back in Dhaka. It’s funny how a city which last week felt so strange, poverty stricken and otherworldly, now feels quite familiar and prosperous.

Of course all these things are relative, but somehow it feels like the people I have met in recent days in rural areas, with no secure income or home are so much more isolated than people in cities. Of course there is great poverty in Dhaka, I haven’t been to the slums on this visit, but I know they are still there. But somehow there is a sense that you are at least connected with the outside world, and so there might be opportunities and communities to protect you.

Maybe its the ever present billboards (promising among other things 100% freedom from dandruff) which contrast with all the handpainted sign boards in the rural areas. Maybe it’s the mobile phones that are everywhere. Or maybe it’s the increased number of motorised vehicles. People are dressed differently – and it might be my imagination, but it feels like a happier place.

But then you could argue that poverty is worse in cities, because poor people tend to me more exposed to those with money than they do in the rural areas. People in Rangpur could go for weeks without coming into contact with people outside their own community, but in Dhaka you have to go through rich areas to get to poor areas and vice versa.

So which is worse? I don’t know and development academics will argue about it for an eternity. To the people at the sharp end it doesn’t matter anyway. The important thing is that we do everything we can to tackle the problem wherever we find it …

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