NGOs in BD :
• NGO activities in Bangladesh focused initially on relief and rehabilitation
works, and later on raising villager income by improving productivity (which
NGOs endeavored to bring about through developing agricultural techniques
as well as villagers' skills in sideline jobs) and by disseminating information on
public sanitation and other social problems. The premise of the NGO efforts
was that the unit of production in the village was the individual farming family.
Villager organizations were to be intermediaries passing on the skills and
information supplied by the NGOs.
• Ideally, the structure of BRAC-PROSHIKA groups forms the basis for
collective development activities. In practice, there was considerable regional
variation in the social unity of different BRAC-PROSHIKA groups.
Rural development activities in which BRAC VO members participate encompass
an array of savings and credit programs, poultry raising, nutrition, participatory
livestock development, vegetable production, plant nurseries, social forestry,
sericulture, fishery, micro-enterprise development, tissue culture, income generation for vulnerable groups, environment protection, and a host of social developments, such as village meetings, education, health services, village society and popular theater. In addition to these activities.
• PROSHIKA group members participate in irrigation, apiculture, housing, health infrastructure building and disaster management. A fund created with individual subscriptions provides revolving funds for several development works. Under the savings group scheme, villagers voluntarily deposit a small amount of money each month with the group, and the accumulated money is lent at low interest to members of the group.
• For one thing, GO-NGO provide only the idea and knowhow for setting up and operating the savings groups; the monetary funding which is the basic resource of the groups is conducted wholly by the villagers.
• For another, the management and the use of the funds are left totally to the collective decision making of the villagers themselves. In other words, the villagers promote economic and social development through the cooperative management of their own private resources. It was realized that savings groups would not succeed where villagers could not form relationships of mutual trust so organizing groups at the village grassroots level proved inevitable. Through the micro-credit programs, BRAC and PROSHIKA are playing a leading role in spearheading the collective action led growth momentum in the rural areas.
• BRAC-PROSHIKA educational programs have greatly reduced illiteracy and empowered rural populations that had very little access to formal education. The activity of PROSHIKA is the people's cultural program, which is a tool for raising awareness of collective enterprise to gain access to resources and to combat social ills. Theater troupes are organized to bring into the open the aspirations, joys, and sorrows of the rural poor. The songs, ballads, and dramas are improvised and performed by the villagers. Through these performances, audiences not only derive entertainment but also become conscious of policy issues and proposed solutions. Issues such as social injustice, dowry, gender discrimination, illiteracy, unjust possession of public resources by the power elites, superstition in health practices, degradation of natural environment and its adverse consequences, and the positive impact of various development actions on the lives of the people constitute elements for dramatic presentation.
• Many factors contribute to the medium's effectiveness, including the fact that the cultural troupes are formed to include villagers, who can draw lessons directly from their own life experiences. Performances take place in a familiar setting, such as the courtyard of a group member's house or a village fair; the language of the performances articulates the audiences' own life and makes it easily comprehensible.
• PROSHIKA group members also organize folk cultural festivals every year in suitable locations;
there, people from different area development centers gather by the thousands and participate in a variety of traditional but lively cultural activities.
• BRAC and PROSHIKA play several distinct roles in the rural development of
Bangladesh. They are: (i) consciousness raising or value introjection for working
together, (ii) setting agendas for poverty alleviation and rural development
through group formation and collective action, (iii) human resource development to have greater access to other resources, (iv) direct action to implement
individual and collective commitments, and (v) regenerating and regularly
monitoring individual and collective capacities for productive activities.
• Through cooperative ventures, the rural poor are graduating to more secure
occupations, marking a gradual shift from uncertain and contingent agricultural
wage employment to self-employment through skills acquisition and involvement
in promotional network.
• The BRAC-PROSHIKA training courses on organizational development and
skill formation present proxy attempts to enhance the prospects for cooperation
by providing economic incentives to cooperation and promoting understanding
of mutual dependencies.
• Funds were also raised by utilizing personal connections and group initiatives. A number of vigilante teams were deployed to look after the embankment especially during night on a rotating basis so that the embankment remained intact.
