Poverty Alleviation, Women Empowerment: Champion goes, legacy lives on
A bolt from the blue came in 2005 and left Sufia Begum in despair: she lost her husband, the sole breadwinner in her family, in an instant to electrocution, leaving her with no money and three young daughters to raise by herself.
With her back against the wall, Sufia, then 26, found a job as a maid in her village, Panimach Kuthi, in the northwest district Kurigram to make ends meet. But her life took a turn for the better two years later, when Brac made its entry.
The world’s largest non-governmental organisation included her in its ultra-poor graduation programme and provided her with a cow and two sheep, a daily stipend and training so that she could rear the cattle properly and make a good livelihood out of it.
Today, Sufia leases land for farming and has a home of her own.
“I have made it -- I have no hardships now. My daughters are in schools,” said a content Sufia over phone last evening.
Sufia’s story, one of triumph, of female empowerment, of rags to riches, sums up the impact Sir Fazle Hasan Abed has had in the lives of countless poor the world over via his brainchild Brac.
“It is one of the great NGOs of the world,” said Nobel Laureate Abhijit Banerjee in his Prize Lecture on December 9 in Sweden.
He highlighted the ultra-poor graduation programme that Sufia has been part of as being a definitive agent for poverty alleviation.
Introduced in 2002, the programme entails giving people assets like cash, goats and cows and supplement these with one-on-one coaching in entrepreneurship, healthcare and the myriad social problems they face.
The programme has been replicated in more than 40 countries and to great success.
“Brac’s programme for the poorest of the poor have durable impact. Ten years later, those people’s income was higher, they owned more assets, they worked longer, they were not lazier, they were happier and healthier,” Banerjee added.
As many as 95 percent of its programme participants maintain their upward trajectory even after four years of completing the programme, according to Brac.
Boosting confidence pays huge dividends, Sir Abed wrote in 2018.
“For too long, people thought poverty was something ordained by a higher power, as immutable as the sun and the moon. This is a myth. We would do well to start paying attention to the evidence, which says that giving people hope and self-esteem may be the greatest investment in human capital that any country can make.”
Research shows that the assets and training have only limited effect when given alone. The real transformation comes through the one-on-one support, which gives the women hope that things can change.
“Asking policymakers to invest in optimism and self-worth may sound like a vague, soft-hearted appeal. It is anything but that,” he added.
But the ultra-poor graduation programme is just one of the many initiatives that the Brac took on since 1972 with the view to easing the burden of the poor and playing a constructive rolein the development of the new born nation.
Today, 10.5 percent of Bangladesh’s population live in extreme poverty, down from 34.3 percent in 2000.
Brac’s journey began in the district of Sylhet as a small-scale relief and rehabilitation project to help rebuild the lives of war refugees.
In nine months, 14,000 homes were reconstructed as part of the relief effort. Several hundred boats were also built for fishermen. Medical centres were opened and other essential services were ensured.
Since then Brac went from strength to strength and now has presence in 69,421 villages in the 64 districts of Bangladesh.
Along with its microfinance programme, Brac reached out to 11 crore people through its various service delivery programmes.
Apart from efforts to fight poverty, the NGO has worked in areas of healthcare, women empowerment, water, sanitation and hygiene, and legal aid migration -- with Sir Abed as the indomitable captain of the ship.
“From fighting a war of liberation to laying the bricks of building a nation from the grassroots, from helping the cyclone-distressed people to women empowerment, from micro credit to reaching out to the distant poor in the char areas and building big business enterprises -- you name it, Sir Abed left a mark everywhere,” said Zahid Hussain, former lead economist of the World Bank’s Dhaka office.
Along with the growth of Brac and spread of its activities in vast areas, Bangladesh too has made progress on various fronts, such as the massive slash in poverty -- from 56.70 percent in 1991-92 to 20.5 percent in last fiscal year -- to cuts in maternal and child mortality, gender parity in education and slowing population growth, he added.
In a Facebook post yesterday, eminent economist Wahiduddin Mahmud said one of the important contributions of Sir Abed was to spread the idea of home-made oral saline through Brac’s one of many effective social campaigns.
Today, Bangladesh is a global leader in reducing child mortality, which is to a great extent due to the reduction of child death from diarrhoea through the widespread adoption of the oral saline technology.
“This is just one example of his so many innovative development ideas,” Mahmud added.
Brac’s main goals, which are poverty alleviation and empowerment of the poor, have remained unchanged all through its journey, said its former vice-chairman Mushtaque Chowdhury.
The NGO worked on alleviation of income poverty through several interventions, one of which is through microfinance.
“But Brac does not only provide money. It brings with it training and other social empowerment programmes.”
It is difficult to put a number on Brac’s contribution to poverty cuts, said Chowdhury, also a professor of Columbia University in New York.
But he said they did an exercise on Brac’s contribution to GDP in 2000 and found it was 1.15 percent.
“An organisation having 1.15 percent of GDP is a huge thing. That is one of measure of what Brac has done in quantitative terms. Sir Abed, Brac, poverty alleviation and development of Bangladesh cannot be separated,” he added.
Firoja Begum, who was left helpless one day when her husband left her in pregnancy until Brac came along, could not agree more of Sir Abed’s impact.
Like Sufia, she too got support from Brac’s ultra-poor graduation programme in 2012.
“I had to work as a farm labourer to survive in those days before I got support from Brac. I do not have to do it anymore. We have got so much from him,” said a confident Firoja over phone from Satkhira, a southwest district.
The ultra-poor graduation programme was closest to Sir Abed’s heart, said its head Mst Rozina Haque.
“He just could not stand to see people suffer.”
He went to so many villages to meet with the programme participants and learn what they needed, she said.
“Small is beautiful, but scale is necessary -- these were the exact words of Sir Abed. This is just a small example of the larger-than-life visionary he was.”
Following this ideology, they will work towards expanding the programme to more locations to serve as many most marginalised and vulnerable groups as possible in the coming days, she said.
This means, hundreds of thousands more like Sufia will get the self-belief to make something out of their lives.
“Women like me would never be able to stand on their own feet without the help of Brac. I would have never been able to walk alone without their assistance. I pray for his departed soul,” Sufia added.
FUNERAL
The body of Sir Fazle Abed would be kept at the Army Stadium from 10:30am to 12:30pm today for everyone to pay respect, said Brac Executive Director Asif Saleh and Brac International Executive Director Muhammad Musa. His namaz-e-janaza would be held there and he would be buried at the Banani graveyard.
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