Bangladesh is home to over 50 indigenous groups. They speak over 35 languages and comprise over 1.8% of the population. 80% live in the plainlands in northern Bangladesh and the rest live in the south, in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. BRAC’s indigenous project has been working with indigenous people living in plainlands in Bangladesh for nine years now, and has learnt valuable lessons on what works.
Cooperative societies are the major wheel turners of the rural economy in Bangladesh. With 3,998 members, 110 village development organisations have been established around the gas-field areas of Sylhet, Moulvibazar and Habiganj districts of Bangladesh. These cooperatives, formed to enhance the socio-economic conditions of its members, are registered with the government’s Department of Cooperatives, supported by the Jibika project in collaboration with BRAC and Chevron.
Wetland regions are vulnerable to natural calamities throughout the year. BRAC’s integrated development programme provides training to people living in the haor region so that they can be climate-resilient.
Bangladesh has largely succeeded in providing access to basic sanitation. Using latrines in rural communities is now no longer seen as a luxury reserved for upper-income households, but a necessity at all levels of society.
But as soon as night falls, she replaces her sari with a colourful salwar kameez and swaps the bucket on her arm for a row of shiny bangles, ready to take the stage. Alpina acts in a popular theatre group that regularly travels across the northern villages of Bangladesh.
We use our smartphones for numerous quotidian purposes: taking photos, accessing social media, browsing the web, and of course, making phone calls. But BRAC has been employing these devices for an entirely different purpose, and it is extremely innovative.
A young woman in her mid 20s is shoveling debris of a completely ruined house, as her mother looks on. The older woman spots the camera and says, “Look they are taking your picture, smile!” Prior to the earthquake, the family of six used to live in a two-storied house. Now the parents along with the daughter live in a dome-shaped temporary shelter built of CGI sheet, while the son lives with a cousin. The father is a sculptor at a local shop and the mother works in a small farm they own. “We are alive and safe, but our house is gone,” says the mother.
For Shahina, a poor woman living in the remote rural district of Noakhali in southern Bangladesh, getting cash used to be a long ordeal. Since she didn’t have a mobile wallet, Shahina used to have to travel three kilometres to visit the local bKash agent to collect remittances sent by her husband and two sons, who were working in the city. Sometimes she was unable to make the trip without someone to watch her children. The roads are often impassable after rains and the market is far away. And often the agent charges informal ‘service fees’ before dispensing her cash.
Bangladesh is a fast-growing mobile money market. With bKash, the second-largest mobile money provider in the world, industry growth in the country has reached impressive heights. Between January 2013 and February of this year, the number of mobile money clients in Bangladesh increased five-fold to 25 million users, with the number of daily transactions increasing from 10 million to 77 million.
While not without challenges and surprises, our experiences indicated that we should be thinking bigger, about how we could significantly scale the use of mobile money in our operations.
BRAC Microfinance has grown to become one of the largest providers of financial services for the poor. It currently serves 4.4 million clients spread across the country. And this includes one of the most hard-to-reach areas – the chars.
According to a nationwide study conducted in 2013, about 87 per cent of women in Bangladesh are abused by their husband. A recent report by BRAC’s community empowerment programme (CEP) revealed that eight out of 10 violence perpetrators are men. Thus involving men is crucial if we want to eradicate violence against women. In 2013, BRAC for the first time initiated a project to engage men as partners to reduce violence against women by changing their attitudes.