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.