wfn.org | WCC - Bangladesh: struggling to survive

["Sheila Mesa" <smm@wcc-coe.org>]

World Council of Churches
Feature, Feat-02-02
For Immediate Use
13 May 2002

Bangladesh: struggling to survive
Sara Speicher

cf. WCC Press Feature, Feat-02-01, of 10 May 2002
cf. WCC Press Update, Up-01-02, of 12 March 2001
cf. WCC Press Release, PR-01-07, of 8 March 2001

Building a house on sand

At first glance, the island seems peaceful. Fields of groundnuts
and rice paddies are richly green, chickens and bullocks roam
about, and thatched huts with earthen floors show care even in
conditions of material poverty.

But the people living on the island have built their homes on
sand. Literally. The chars of Bangladesh are sandbars on the
Brahmaputra river, and their existence is threatened each year
from monsoon seasonal flooding. About 230,000 people live on
these chars, without access to electricity, communication, health
or education services, not to mention the threat of displacement,
loss of property and even life because of  the floods. They have
no choice: land is unavailable on the mainland.

Bangladesh is one of the poorest, most densely populated and
least developed countries in the world. 130 million people live
in a country approximately the size of the US state of Iowa with
144,000 square kilometers. Because of the population density and
poverty, many people live in flood-prone areas. 

About a third of the country floods each year during the monsoon
season. "Normal" flooding is good though, say development
workers.  "Having 25,000 square km under water is a normal
flood," says Charles Sarkar, programme manager at the Christian
Commission for Development in Bangladesh's (CCDB) Disaster
Preparedness Programme . "People like them because they help
fertilize the soil. But if more than 50,000 square kilometers are
under water, it's a major disaster."

The last major flooding disaster was in 1998 when 100,000 sq. km
(two-thirds of the country) were inundated, leaving 25 million
people homeless.

Action by Churches Together (ACT) members in Bangladesh focus on
disaster preparedness. Their projects range from promoting the
use of portable stoves to minimize losses during floods, to
incorporating preparedness in school curricula. Sarkar also
emphasized the importance of using local resources to promote
disaster preparedness. For example CCDB asks imams to talk about
preparedness in their Friday services.

Knowing that natural disasters are a fact of life in Bangladesh,
the five ACT members in the country coordinate actions during
such crises. CCDB coordinates actions in the south of the country
while Rangpur Dinajpur Rural Service (RDRS) works in the north.
Other ACT members are the Bangladesh Baptist Church Sangha and
Church of Bangladesh - both members of the World Council of
Churches - and Koinonia. 

Although the Christians in Bangladesh are a "microscopic
minority" of about 400,000 people in a population of 130 million,
they are very active in rural and social development, health
care, education, and disaster prevention and response. The search
for ways to work more cooperatively come from a very real desire
to maximize sincere Christian witness and service in a needy
country.

Micro-credit for sustainable development

Sudhir Adhikari, president of the National Council of Churches
in Bangladesh (NCCB), recalls that in the early 1970s, a few
churches provided small loans to individuals trying to alleviate
poverty and build a better future for themselves and their
communities. The church trusted the recipients, guided and
inspired by their pastors, to repay the loans. The method did not
work. "Christian values of love and forgiveness actually worked
against loan repayment. People knew they would be 'forgiven,'"
Adhikari smiles.

Then came Dr Muhammed Yunus. In the mid-1970s, Mohammed Yunus,
then chair of the Economics Department at Chittagong University,
started to provide very small loans to groups of local artisans
to help them break a cycle of poverty and set up their own small
businesses. That was the beginning of the Bangladesh Grameen
Bank. Since then, the bank has provided over 2.5 billion
USD-worth of micro-loans to more than two million people in rural
Bangladesh. Ninety-four percent of the borrowers are women, and
the loan repayment rate is over 99%. 

Using Yunus' idea of group dynamism, other NGOs, including
church development programmes, launched very successful
micro-credit projects with extremely high refund rates. The other
breakthrough, Adhikari says, was going to the women in an Islamic
society. 

In the Habir Bari community outside of Dhaka, CCDB started a
micro-credit project with the women. WCC staff met the very
energetic 15-member committee overseeing the project. The women
explained that, although the community is primarily Muslim, they
chose CCDB to help them to save money in a safe place. 

Before the project began, they had to ask the men for all their
money - for food, health care, and household projects. Then they
received small loans for farming and for raising goats and fish
to sell at local markets. Their initial projects have expanded
into sanitation, nutrition and education. Now with the money they
are earning, they are helping their husbands. How do the husbands
react to this? Laughter from the group. At the beginning, they
admit, the men were a bit resistant. But now they are quite happy
and support the projects. Family decisions are now shared, or
made by the women, and in their micro-credit meetings, they also
inform each other about and discuss education, women's rights,
elections and civil rights. 

Almost all Bangladesh NGOs have micro-credit programmes. Not all
work the same way, however. CCDB planning and monitoring
coordinator Gobinda Saha says that, unfortunately, many NGOs now
use their micro-credit programmes as a "business" and seem to
have forgotten that the main aim is people's self-reliance. CCDB
itself started a micro-credit programme in 1974 but, in 1996,
decided "they should not do 'business' on poverty". At that
point, the commission started a new programme - the
People-Managed Savings and Credit - under the People's
Participatory Rural Development Programme. The new micro-finance
system provides interest-free loans and a participatory approach
to decision-making. It currently has 202 programmes, whose
repayment rate is 96 percent.

Responding to disasters: building for the future

After the 1971 war for independence, Bangladesh was left ravaged
and desperate, with millions of people fleeing to neighbouring
countries. The government appealed to the world for aid and, in
response, the World Council of Churches (WCC) and its ecumenical
partners worked with the national council of churches to provide
emergency relief. The resulting programme was up and running so
fast that it got one of the new country's first transport
department's licence plates: WCC1.

The Bangladesh Emergency Relief and Rehabilitation Service,
formed under the NCCB by the WCC and ecumenical partners, was
transformed into the CCDB in 1973 to continue rehabilitation and
social services, and work on long-term community development.
CCDB presently works with 87,000 families in 2,600 villages in 27
out the country's 64 districts. They work with the poorest of the
poor, with whole families, but particularly with women.

Their work reflects many of the unique challenges facing social
and development work in Bangladesh. One of the first realities is
that it is a majority Muslim country. At 0.3 percent of the
population, Christians identify themselves as a "microscopic
minority". In Bangladesh's historically tolerant society,
religious freedom is not an issue, but it is clear that all
development work must be multi-religious. CCDB staff and
policy-makers also come from a variety of religious backgrounds.
As one staff member put it, "We have different beliefs but work
in the same house."

Cultural and religious taboos are another challenge... for work
on HIV/AIDs for example. CCDB began working on HIV/AIDS in 1993
at a time when it was not considered a problem. Compared to other
Asian countries, the incidence of HIV/AIDs in Bangladesh is still
quite low, although not as low as the approximately 190 cases
mentioned in official government statistics. CCDB staffers say
the 190 are those who reach hospitals. WHO estimates that 13,000
are infected. But people are not encouraged to seek help. Issues
such as sexual behaviour are extremely difficult to discuss, even
 privately, and patients are not told how to prevent the spread
of HIV/AIDs, thus increasing the risk for the rest of the
society. All CCDB staff have attended an HIV/AIDS awareness
programme, and the commission has a non-discriminatory staff
policy regarding people with HIV/AIDS. Its goal is to break the
silence around HIV/AIDs, targetting high-risk behaviours, to
prevent HIV/AIDS from becoming an epidemic in Bangladesh. 

Foreign aid 

An added reality is the country's very real poverty; in that
context, foreign aid to support NGO work is a mixed blessing.
Afsan Chowdury, senior assistant editor of the Bangladesh Daily
Star, notes that in a very poor society, "NGOs provide
employment. NGOs make money. Crises mean they can make more
money... Where money comes in without accountability, that's
where the problems start."

NCCB president Sudhir Adhikari says that there are about 1,200
large and medium-level NGOs working on social development in
Bangladesh, with a total of 26,000 NGOs officially registered
with the government. The small number of  Protestant NGOs are
entirely dependent on foreign donations, and bring in about USD 8
million per year. He notes that "Most of the NGOs work on the
same issues, but in different parts of the country." Ways need to
be found whereby NGOs, and the churches themselves, can
cooperate, both in their local work and in their relationships
with outside churches and donors.

"Round Tables" facilitated by the WCC Regional Relations and
Ecumenical Sharing team help coordinate NGO action and bring
foreign donors and local NGOs together for joint strategizing.
The WCC facilitates 35 round tables on a national and regional
basis as a platform where partners and agencies involved in
development and ecumenical service can share, reflect and set
priorities for joint action.  Mathews George Chunakara, WCC Asia
secretary says. "The CCDB Round Table is one of the best
WCC-coordinated round tables in terms of accountability,
transparency and mutual respect in partnership. Moreover, the
CCDB partners try to enhance the ecumenical discipline of sharing
of resources as well as implementing programmes at the local
level, which is important in Bangladesh's context."

Another possible step towards more national cooperation is being
taken by an Ecumenical Social Action Group of Christian NGO
executives who recently gathered under the auspices of the NCCB
to coordinate their efforts. Each is involved in church work and
wants to strengthen ecumenism in Bangladesh. As one executive
noted, "We want to work to empower people, not the
organizations."

Chunakara emphasizes that the responsibility to alleviate
poverty and intensify rural development measures must be taken by
both local organizations and foreign donors. "The proliferation
of NGOs and increasing competition and organizational rivalry
spoil the good spirit and enthusiasm quite often. The northern
partners, also should be careful in selecting the most credible
local partners."

--------------------------
Sara Speicher is a communication officer in the WCC Public
Information Team. She visited Bangladesh in January 2002 for a
Global Communicators Network meeting and met with representatives
of churches and ecumenical organizations in the country.

Photos to accompany this feature can be found on our web site:
http://www.photooikoumene.org/countries/bangladesh/index.html 

For further information, please contact Media Relations Office, 
tel:  (+41.22) 791.61.53 

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