Babies, Schools, Loans, Milk, and Ramadan- What a Week!

On Monday I went on a field visit to the city of Gazipur with BRAC. I was able to go with a student from the UK working on a research project concerning microfinance. It was nice to have a new person to talk to and to go on a tour with another person. We were really lucky with traffic and ended up only taking an hour or so each way, I think if we would have left a few minutes later the traffic situation would have been much different.  Our visit started with learning about the general structure of the Gazipur office, this was primarily through visiting a lot of the managers in their offices and learning about the structure of each component. It was very interesting to learn how they utilize volunteers, staff within the community, and the managers to reach so many individuals.

            Our first program to stop by was one of the three microfinance programs that BRAC runs. We went and observed a meeting with female loan recipients, most of the loans BRAC gives out go to women. The community staff member leads this meeting with the women on a weekly basis, all of the loans are paid off in 46 weeks. Seeing this experience in person was great because in courses, especially last semester, we spoke about microfinance but seeing it in person with the basket for collecting the payments and the booklets with all the record keeping made the entire idea of microfinance much more attainable.

            Following the microfinance program visit, we went to learn about one of the health education programs. I had no expectations for this and learned quickly that I could not have anticipated what actually happened. We drove about 20 minutes away from the main BRAC regional office to a local office where an discussion on healthy pregnancies and birth was in process. At a certain point in the discussion some men arrived and began taking some medication distributed by a volunteer. We were told that they were undergoing tuberculosis treatment and have to meet with the volunteer every day to receive their medication. A few minutes later the woman leading the meeting stood up with a young woman and started toward a separate room, the guide told me I could follow. I was very confused at what was going on, the guide mentioned that she was going in for an exam. This made me hesitant for multiple reasons, I am not a medical professional so there was really nothing I could provide in this situation and I didn’t really feel like I had the right to interrupt this woman’s privacy. Following the push of the woman over the meeting I joined but was ready to leave if the appointment got to be more than I needed to be around. However, the exam was very quick just a checking of circulation, blood pressure, and the heartbeat of the baby. I actually got to hear the heartbeat, the young woman is 4 months along and despite a major language barrier it was clear that she was fine with me listening to the heartbeat. They then checked my blood pressure, again I was very confused with what was going on but followed along. I think this might be one of the moments I remember most about my time here, it was a moment that I did not expect but through smiles and a growing baby there was unity between the 4 women in that room. The joy from hearing the heartbeat of a complete stranger and knowing that she was working to educate herself was something that I think anyone can understand.  

            A local man offered us tea in his home and goodness gracious did he have a beautiful home. He was the landlord of a large area of land, including the local BRAC building and offered us mangos, mango juice, and tea. He has visited England a couple of years ago so he and the other student on the tour talked a lot about London, another reminder of just how small our world can seem at times.  We left this area after a while and headed off to a local BRAC elementary school.  BRAC has schools throughout Bangladesh that are another free program. When we arrived the students all said hello and greeted us with some different dances. We stayed to observe a lesson and I wished I understood what had been going on but it was all in Bangla. It was really nice to see a bunch of kids having fun in a classroom and being able to learn because of a school provided by BRAC.  Education is so important no matter where you are in the world, but in a country like Bangladesh that experiences such extreme poverty, any way to build upon a better future could mean an incredible improvement for the people.

            Our last stop of the day and the most unexpected for me was a milk processing and packaging factory. BRAC realized that with so many individuals throughout different villages having cows but not being able to sell any milk because everyone else has a cow. Following this realization they developed a process of collecting the milk at chilling centers then transporting the milk to the factory, and processing it into different products. This has been an incredible success for BRAC and because of this social enterprise they are able to take the profits from the milk and further develop community programs, as well as grow the milk enterprise.

            The entire day was overwhelming when considering that this is all done through the same main organization. From what I could see from the community has embraced the different programs that BRAC offers, making it easy to understand how they can be the largest non-governmental organization in the world.

            Following my day with BRAC I went back to the habitat office and continued developing the advocacy program. On Thursday night the staff at habitat had an Iftar party. Iftar is the meal each day at sunset, the first meal since sunrise that those individuals fasting eat since before 4 am. It was a really interesting event, before the meal some of the staff presented some of the general points about Ramadan.  It was really interesting to learn about the different components of the Ramadan month and the different important days, particularly the last 10 days. The party was a great end to the week.

            If you made it to the end of this blog thank you for keeping with it until the end! Just over two weeks left here in Dhaka, I can’t believe it but look forward to finishing up this project and making as many memories as I can :-D.

Hello Again!

          It has been a couple of weeks since my last post and I'm not really sure that I have a good reason for why. I have been continuing to work at the office and the project continues to progress. Over the past two weeks I have been working on developing documents that habitat can use in the future as part of an advocacy program. However, at this time we are still trying to focus in on some of the main issues that the organization can cover but this is quite difficult. There are so many different issues and every one is complex. I am making a lot of general issue documents and hoping that they can be specified either while I am still here or later in the future. A lot of my recommendations have focused on the need to collect research concerning the issues identified by the community but this will take time and is not able to be completed in my remaining time in Bangladesh. 
          This upcoming week I am going on a field visit with BRAC, a non-profit that started in Bangladesh but now works internationally and works on a wide variety of issues. According to Wikipedia BRAC is also the largest non-governmental organization in the world! I am excited to see how they work in the community and hopefully learn some methods that could be helpful in the project with habitat. 
          I cannot believe that in 3 weeks I will be starting the journey home, some days it seems like I just arrived and others it seems like I have been here for a long time. Over this past week I had a couple of conversations that really made me think about this experience and the universal nature of service. I was speaking with a habitat employee about the project and hopes for the future, we ended up speaking how the ways different roles in an organization are  important. It was a conversation that I feel like I had a lot when working as an administrative assistant and it just reminded me how service is such an all encompassing term. In our first semester at the Clinton School we were tasked with developing an individual definition of public service. Although this was a challenging assignment it was very interesting to see how the definitions varied among each member of the class. It was also a very refreshing conversation, it is easy to bogged down in the difficulty of finding out different information but then to get focused back in on why an organization like habitat is so important, when there are millions upon millions of people living in substandard housing or urban slums. 
          I will probably update soon with more details about my day with BRAC.

Halfway Point :-)

I have officially passed my halfway point in my international project experience. It's both a strange and exciting feeling to say the least! I feel like I have finally gotten the hang of some of the necessary logistics to living here, although I am very lucky to have a lot that I don't have to worry about like so many other people in this huge city. Last weekend I went on a tour of the old capital of Bangladesh, it was one of the most beautiful and happiest days I have had since arriving. It is incredible how different the more rural parts are from the city, the lack of honking and being away from all the different vehicles on the roads was a nice break. During this day trip I was able to see a lot of different Hindu temples and some incredible homes from the colonial times here that were abandoned but have remained in relatively good condition because of government intervention. What struck me most of all though on this day was the kindness of the people, especially of the children we saw. There were a lot of kids around some of the areas we visited, especially when we went to a school made entirely out of bamboo! The kids were so interested in why I was there, continually walking up to me saying "Hi" and "How are you?" in English. It was so sweet and although I don't think they understood very much when I responded back to them, they really made me smile. 

During my time here I have been able to see quite a few different sites. However, I'm not sure anyone could ever adjust to seeing so many disparities when out and about both within in Dhaka and the rural communities. It is challenging to find the words to describe what all you can see when going down the busy roads. What I have taken note of and discussed with different habitat staff is how some people survive with such little money but do so by working so incredibly hard. Take for example building a bridge. Back in the US a bridge would involve a lot of workers, big equipment, and lots of time. Here in Bangladesh and I'm sure in lots places in the developing world a bridge is made with many workers, bamboo, barely any big equipment, and a lot of time. I don't want to make it seem like back home building a bridge isn't a lot of hard work because I certainly realize that it takes a lot of time, hard work, and planning to get it all done and then add in the many hours of labor. However, here it is startling to see how the same sort of structure is built without such large tools. Instead of big concrete trucks you will see people carrying what I will describe as big plates of concrete from one communal concrete collection area and then walking it over to the area being worked on at that time. This process makes the process of the concrete structures take so much longer and to think about all the concrete necessary for that bridge, well it is a bit overwhelming to think about all that work. Instead of steal structures to support the workers you see bamboo structures used. This is just one example of the hard work here. Organizations such as habitat and so many other non-profits are so important because there is not a social security system here like we have back home. If something unexpected happens and the finances run out it can put a family into a very hard situation. Many people move to Dhaka for better access to jobs but in such a big city they face living in slums because of the inability to pay for other housing.  As a friend's blog recently reminded me, there are no simple solutions but I can certainly say that I am proud to know that organizations such as habitat are working hard to improve the lives and stability of people here in Bangladesh and around the world. 

I appreciate everyone keeping up with this blog and hope that this week I have been able to share a little bit more about the experience of being here. Ramadan has started bringing with it a whole new cultural experience to witness.

Best wishes to all I hope you will enjoy some pictures of the memories I made this past week!