The 1980 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership

BIOGRAPHY of Fazle Hazan Abed

When the sixth of their eight children was born on April 27, 1936, Siddiq and Sufia Khatun Hasan could not have foreseen that their new son would devote his life to improving the lot of the landless. They were landholders in Sylhet, East Bengal—then India but to become East Pakistan after partition of the subcontinent in 1947 and Bangladesh in 1972—where their son was born. They named him FAZLE, but within the family he was always called ABED, the name which he has taken as his "second" surname and by which he is known.

FAZLE HASAN ABED received a good education. After completing 12 years in district schools—Habiganj Primary, Comilla Zilla, Habiganj Government High, and Pabna Zilla from which he graduated in 1952—ABED went to Dacca, the capital of what was by then East Pakistan where he took a two-year course in Intermediate Science at Dacca College. In 1954 he traveled to Scotland to take a four-year program in naval architecture at Glasgow University combined with apprenticeship in Yarrow & Company, Glasgow-based shipbuilders.

Feeling after two years that he had not found his life's work in naval architecture ABED left Glasgow and went to London where he took admission as a registered student of the Chartered Institute of Cost and Management Accountants for a five-year professional course. In order to gain practical experience and meet the institute requirements he worked in financial and management accounting departments of a number of industrial and commercial firms in London. Planning to stay abroad for the time being, he took out British citizenship in 1962 because he found it easier to travel with a British passport than with a Pakistani one. He completed the professional examinations of the institute in 1963 and was elected associate member in 1964—good preparation for one soon to be handling hundreds of thousands of dollars in relief funds and grants. The next year he worked briefly as assistant accountant for the Bramber Engineering Company and then transferred to Aircraft Marine Products as pricing assistant and management accountant for two years. To hone his skills further he enrolled in 1968 in a one year course on computer science at Toronto University, Toronto, Canada.

Thus armed, FAZLE HASAN ABED returned to East Pakistan in 1969 to assume the position of Treasurer, and a year later Head of Finance and Member of the Board, of Pakistan Shell Oil Company based in Chittagong, East Pakistan's main port. His future as a member of his country's educated and economic elite seemed assured.

What changed ABED's life was the devastating cyclone which struck East Pakistan in 1970. It left in its wake 200,000 dead and countless thousands homeless and starving. ABED immediately plunged into relief work, enlisting his friends to start an organization called Help, for the aid of cyclone victims.

A few months later the political tension that had been building up between East and West Pakistan since the partition of British India in 1947 exploded. The Bengalis felt that West Pakistan—separated from the East by 1,000 miles of India—was reaping the benefits of their agricultural output and not giving them full political representation. The capital of the divided country, originally Karachi, now Islamabad, was located in the west, and West Pakistani politicians and bureaucrats predominated in policy making and government jobs. Moreover, since the resources of West Pakistan were fewer than those of East, the government funneled the major portion of foreign aid into the western provinces rather than into Bengal. The business community, which dominated both sectors, tended to come from the west and to invest profits made in Bengal in industrial enterprises in their home districts. As a result of these factors, by the late 1960s the per capita income in West Pakistan was estimated to be twice that of East Pakistan—and resentment in Bengal ran high, leading to demands for independence after the elections of November 1970.

On March 25, 1971 the Pakistani army moved to control the situation and Bengali resistance to this government action led to civil war, with India entering the fray on behalf of the newly proclaimed state of Bangladesh (country of the Bengalis).

In April ABED resigned from Shell Oil and went to London, using his contacts there to form Action Bangladesh in support of the liberation struggle, and Help Bangladesh to garner funds for the "freedom fighters" and the estimated 10 million refugees who had streamed across the border into India. Since the Provisional Government of Bangladesh, headquartered in Calcutta, had organized Bengalis working abroad, ABED and his groups concentrated on the intellectuals, eliciting the greatest response from young British idealists and Bangladeshis studying in Britain. During the next eight months ABED commuted between the U.K. and Calcutta, where the relief supplies he obtained were channeled to the refugees and the war front. In December 1971 Bangladesh gained its independence and ABED resumed again to his homeland.

The material damage caused by the war was estimated by the United Nations Relief Operation to be "of the order of US$1,200 million." The loss of agricultural output was figured at US$300 million and damage to housing—mainly bamboo huts—at around US$200 million: "Food apart, the damage to agricultural potential was rather small; the major effects were the loss of animals and damage to fishing equipment." The most critical damage, from the viewpoint of economic recovery, was to transport facilities. Bangladesh had a population at this time of between 70 and 80 million, with a density of nearly 1,300 people per square mile—4 per acre; its per capita income was estimated at US$70.

During the war ABED had come to realize that merely repairing the facilities that existed before would be painfully insufficient for the needs of the new nation. A more complete scheme for rural development would be necessary. But in the beginning he took the money left from Help Bangladesh and founded the Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee (BRAC), a name later changed to Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee as its philosophic orientation broadened.

ABED chose to focus his immediate rehabilitation efforts in the Sulla, Derai and Baniyachong thanas (subdistricts) of his home district of Sylhet. This region, covering 160 square miles, with a population of about 120,000, was, he says, "one of the worst affected . . . because it was a mainly Bengali Hindu area. The Pakistan Army [being made up primarily of West Pakistani Muslims] was particularly tough on the Hindus and most of them had gone to India so their homes were destroyed. This was the area that seemed completely devastated." It was also so inaccessible that it was unlikely, ABED felt, to get major relief support from the government and other volunteer agencies.

Combining vision with common sense and exceptional management skills, ABED first organized a group of volunteers to do a survey of the whole area in order to find out how many houses and head of cattle had been destroyed and how many families needed seed and fertilizer. The goal at this point was to return the villagers to their normal agricultural practices. When the survey was completed he went to Dacca and recruited 45 "idealistic unemployed" Dacca University graduates at volunteer salaries to help him process the data manually. On the basis of the results he formulated a project proposal whose initial aims were to provide housing units for 8,000 (later expanded to 10,200) families and to supply seeds and fertilizer to farmers, and fishing nets and boats to fishermen. ABED took his proposal to OXFAM (Oxford Committee for Famine Relief) of U.K. and Canada, which decided he 'looked like a good bet" and immediately (March 10, 1972) granted him the necessary US$400,000 to implement it.

The recruits were divided into different camps and deployed to the project area where they set about separating the people into four categories according to need. People who owned three acres or more of land were charged 500 taka (Tk7 to US$1) for housing materials; those with between one and three acres were charged Tk200, and those with less than one acre Tk1O0. About half the population were landless, in the sense that they owned no cultivable land or were fishermen without their own boats, but they owned their own house lots. These people were not charged at all. Each group received a different colored card to facilitate collection of fees. Regardless of the fee charged, each family eventually was provided with Tk500 worth of galvanized iron sheets and bamboo with which to build a new home. Meanwhile the government supplied emergency food relief and UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund) provided a milk supplement to feed 15,000 children. In addition each family received seeds to plant a vegetable garden.

Assembling the building materials taxed ABED's talents. Bamboo had to be cut in the hills of Assam, India, (Bangladesh is a flood plain) and floated by some of BRAC's recruits downriver for 15-20 days in rafts stretching up to two miles in length. To take possession of timber for fishing boats—which was held up by the refusal of the government of India to allow it out of the country without export permits—ABED had to call on the chief minister of Assam to persuade him to release it. When the timber arrived ABED hired all the carpenters in the area to build some 300 boats which were quickly turned over—without cost—to fishermen so that they could regain their livelihood and the villagers could obtain needed foodstuffs.

The galvanized iron sheets for roofing had to be imported from Japan. Again there were delays because the port facilities were clogged with relief cargo that was pouring into the country. ABED was forced to borrow 1,000 tons of iron sheets from the government and barge it up to Sulla in order to start building houses quickly.

This "relief phase" of the Sulla project lasted from March to December 1972 and supplied the barest essentials for people to survive: houses, boats, fishing nets and four centers which provided free primary medical care to all who came. The efficiency of this operation had a major advantage, as ABED said: "it created our image that we were a good agency," thereby increasing BRAC's credibility and ensuring funds for future development.

About this time ABED's relatives decided it was time for him to marry. Since marriages in Bangladesh were customarily arranged by families ABED considers himself very fortunate that just the right candidate was available. He suggested to his relatives the name of Ayesha Chowdhury, the sister of a very close friend. The two families had known each other for almost half a century so, as Ayesha puts it, "we satisfied everybody." Ayesha and ABED were wed in April 1973 and their daughter Tamara was born a year later. Ayesha proved to be more than a housewife and cheerful companion. She immediately plunged into BRAC's volunteer work, providing invaluable service in the functional education sector that was being developed, particularly with regard to programs for women. In 1975 she received the official title of executive assistant.

When the targeted relief program in the Sulla Project had been completed, ABED turned his attention to the wider problem of establishing rural institutions and infrastructure in the same 200 villages (phase II), with the ultimate goal (phase III) of developing the ability of the people of Sulla to take over the major programs initiated by BRAC.

ABED's proposal for phase II of the Sulla project (November 1972-December 1975)—to develop community centers, education, primary health care and cooperative organizations—was immediately funded by OXFAM (U.K. and Canada) for US$506,000. Thirty-five more university graduates were hired to help implement the programs, bringing the total serving to 80. These young people were still imbued with idealism and came from the top of their class; post-independence enthusiasm wore off in the next few years, however.

BRAC also hired four doctors—who like the students were idealistic in the aftermath of the struggle for independence—to prepare an 11-month training course for paramedics who were to be instructed in delivering primary health care. The latter were drawn from the villagers themselves, at first from among those with a modicum of education. It was soon discovered, however, that such persons, with even a small amount of education, were more interested in finding better jobs elsewhere than in serving the community in which they lived. Those who stayed tended to assume a professional—that is an elitist—attitude, psychologically separating themselves from the poor of the community.

BRAC therefore changed its selection process and chose members from among the newly organized groups of village poor to train as paramedics. These usually illiterate people received training for six months. They would study in the classroom one day a week and then they would be given certain tasks to do in their villages during the rest of the week concerning public health, sanitation and basic curative services. To forestall their developing into a "professional class" within the village, these tasks were considered part of their joint group activity and they were either not paid or payment was returned to the group. In some cases, such as the program for administering oral rehydration (a salt, sugar and water mixture) to diarrhea victims, the entire group was trained, not just the designated paramedics. In the end, the paramedics were taught not only to prevent disease, but to treat the 15 major diseases— mainly intestinal and respiratory—which cause 97 to 98 percent of all village illness. Medicines were color-coded to facilitate identification. Although the villagers were at first wary of these new recruits and their lack of formal education, they soon discovered they could explain their problems to them more easily than to educated professionals. When villagers came with ailments clearly beyond the scope of the paramedics, they were immediately referred to medical stations. For the first several years the trainees were all male; BRAC could not find a woman doctor who would spend time in the field training female paramedics until 1977.

During this second phase of the Sulla project, ABED and his colleagues began tackling the major problem of education. The original plan, ABED writes, "had envisaged eliminating illiteracy in Sulla within three years by conducting two courses a year in some 200 literacy centers. Although 255 literacy centers were opened, a high drop out rate, diminishing community interest, flood damage, and the inability of the communities to repair damaged centers resulted in the closure of more than half of the centers and discontinuation of many others." Realizing the shortcomings of this purely academic adult literacy program, whose materials were not relevant to the situations with which they were meant to deal, ABED recast BRAC's approach. The "functional education" which he sought to impart would be geared to the immediate problems of the very poor rural villagers.

To develop new materials, ABED turned for assistance to World Education of New York which helped BRAC hire consultants familiar with the ideas of Paolo Freire, a great Brazilian educationist whose books ABED had read and whose experiences in Brazil coincided with BRAC's experience in Bangladesh. ABED realized that one had to learn from the poor themselves what they perceived their problems to be and what they wanted to do about them. Functional education would give the villagers a way to discuss the problems, their causes and possible solutions. By assuming responsibility for their own actions the poor would not only move to ameliorate their conditions, but would regain

a sense of self worth, dignity and self respect. What ABED therefore sought from World Education was to learn techniques to elicit responses—not receive educational materials which he felt BRAC could best develop according to Bangladeshi needs.

In May 1974 BRAC set up, with the aid of a US$92,000 grant from OXFAM (Canada and America), a Materials Development Unit consisting of three writers, one illustrator and one advisor. The first consultant for the project was Leon Clark from the Center for International Education at the University of Massachusetts. Clark arrived during yet another disastrous flood. The water inside BRAC base camp headquarters was thigh-high and "filled with fish, snakes and frogs," and only four inches below mattress level in his living quarters. Nevertheless, as Clark wrote in his journal, "at any one time there would be from four to eight people in my room, perched on bedsteads or windowsills . . . talking about the project and making recommendations, while in the background the rain poured down and the wind pushed waves four or five feet high against the tin walls of the house."

Despite this initial enthusiasm Clark found the problem was to convince the BRAC educational research staff that they could—and must—learn from the villagers their needs and goals. "Elitism is very much engrained in our culture," ABED has noted, and "the whole concept of learning from the people was alien." The university recruits felt they knew the problems so why did they have to ask the poor what they were? The investigation into developing educational materials became, then, an investigation into the whole behavior system of Bangladeshi society and, says ABED, completely transformed BRAC's way of looking at rural development.

As an early exercise Clark asked the unit workshop to list the needs which the villagers themselves had cited. "At first many unfelt needs, urban or Western projections, were listed. But going back to the sources, we found time and time again that villagers had not in fact expressed those needs. In the end the list of felt needs was very short indeed, consisting only of four items: land ownership, housing, low-priced commodities and food. With these needs in mind, we began selecting topics for the individual lessons."

Although the group seemed to agree with the findings and accept the new teaching methods and materials evolving, Clark shortly realized that they remained unconvinced, still believing that teachers should give lectures to the villagers and that classes should focus on literacy almost exclusively. Feeling strongly that he as an outsider should not try to impose his views on the group drawing up the new teaching materials, Clark turned to ABED whose ability to work with and persuade people without arousing opposition or hostility enabled him to discuss with unit personnel the advantages of trying the new method. He finally convinced them when he pointed out that it was already agreed to test the new literacy approach with some non-readers in the BRAC office before using it in a village setting. The group agreed to proceed. As Clark noted, ABED is "extremely persuasive."

The Materials Unit eventually developed 60 core lessons with an optional 40 more—all of which have been tested and revised three times, with a fourth revision on the way. The core lessons are designed to deal with the major issues affecting the lives of the rural population and to provide the people with a level of literacy and mathematical skills to address them. Each lesson deals with a problem which the villagers themselves discuss in light of their own understanding; the problem is not explained to them. Materials include 139 charts, a lesson book containing the 100 lessons and a teacher's manual. Several games are used to reinforce the lessons. The games are those to which the villagers are accustomed. Blind Man's Bluff, for instance, may be used with women to increase group participation and instill a sense of shared common feelings. After the women have enjoyed their play for awhile the BRAC woman worker may suggest that the game, "tells us something about the way we feel in real life." What do we feel when we are blindfolded? she may ask. "Darkness! Okay, in real life do we ever feel blinded, helpless, dependent? Yes, when we were first married, when we gave birth to our first child!" In this way the women begin to realize they share many of the same doubts and worries and a sense of community emerges.

ABED found that the rural people responded well to the new approach, although the university recruits who were to teach it often had the same elitist reaction that had made ABED's research and development staff skeptical. When the success of the program was established, however, other groups—some of which were headed by former BRAC personnel—requested use of the new materials. "Most of the voluntary agencies in Bangladesh," ABED comments, "are very much influenced by what we have done in education and training."

The government now wants to institute a national education program and BRAC has been invited to give them materials for it. ABED, however, has fumed down this request, feeling that the government priority—i.e. literacy alone, rather than raising awareness for development—is insufficient. "Boosting literacy alone," says ABED, "won't change the people and in no time they’ll forget about it. . . . People won't read unless they want to. They won't do anything unless they can see some value in it." Moreover, should the government fail, he feels BRAC's materials will be blamed.

BRAC, on its part, publishes a journal to help keep new literates from lapsing into illiteracy. Gonokendra (Community Center), was initially funded with a US$200,000 grant from UNICEF for free distribution to all primary and secondary schools in Bangladesh. Its content is oriented toward increasing awareness of problems of rural development and to providing knowledge in matters of general interest. The journal's circulation has increased from 2,000 to 61,000, with an estimated readership of 225,000. It now has 12 pages, 4 of which are designed for new literates. The journal sells advertising space and the aim is for it eventually to become self-financing.

In 1974 the severe floods about which Clark wrote caused extensive damage to crops throughout much of Bangladesh and BRAC was asked to help with famine relief in the northern region of Rangpur. There it started a feeding program for 15,000 children under the age of 10 whose nutrition level was below 80 percent of standard. For the next six months BRAC staff distributed food from UNICEF, wheat from CARE (Cooperative for American Relief Everywhere; 1968 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for International Understanding), biscuits from the Salvation Army, milk from the government and other materials acquired through another OXFAM grant. After some time the politicians in the area began to fear BRAC would usurp their powers. To avoid confrontation ABED pulled his staff out of the region when the essential relief work was completed.

BRAC undertook instead a development project in Manikganj (first phase 1975-1978), which was funded with a US$251,000 grant from Brot für der Welt (Bread for the World) of Germany. Manikganj is an agricultural region 40 miles west of Dacca with 160,000 people living in a 76 square mile area. The populace is 60 percent Muslim and 40 percent Hindu. BRAC's approach in Manikganj was to promote rural development activities through local youth organizations, women's groups and cooperative societies, using a minimum of BRAC personnel.

ABED decided to start the development awareness process through functional education programs. As in the Sulla project, in order to create the dialogue necessary for a sense of group identity and cohesion, he felt BRAC had to identify the homogeneous groups. "If you have people with land and others who are landless," he points out, "they are obviously not going to have the same kind of interests." To separate the landless from the landed BRAC started food-for-work programs, reasoning correctly that only the poorest would come forward to participate. These programs were designed, however, to fill needs identified as priorities by the village as a whole—e.g. building roads, canals and irrigation channels.

Although most women in Manikganj were in purdah and would not come out for the food-for-work program, no matter how poor, some did show up. These women faced great opposition from the community so BRAC tried to organize the villagers to accept the idea of women working outside their homes.

The strategy in Manikganj then, as in Sylhet, was to identify the poorest group and through functional education, give its members the psychological capability to change their lives. BRAC's strategy was based on two premises: that people, even the poorest, want to make their own decisions and support themselves, rather than accept handouts from others; and that poverty actually arises from powerlessness. BRAC's goal was to reduce the powerlessness of the poor by showing them how to organize themselves and act.

In order for poor villagers to realize that they are capable of changing the order of things, they must first understand that their problems are caused, not by God or fate, but by the structure of society. Accordingly, in workshop discussions BRAC induced them to talk about the society in which they found themselves, the kinds of exploitation they were subject to within it and the causes of such exploitation. Whereas revolutionaries might aim at eliminating the exploitative individuals, BRAC tries "to create alternative systems which will reduce this exploitation."

Problems dealt with by the newly organized landless groups included the food-for-work program itself. They discussed, for instance, the level of food provided for the work, how to check corruption in the handling and distribution of the food, and the kind of work programs being implemented.

Women were often particularly responsive, especially when they realized that social customs which they had assumed to be immutable— such as easy divorces for men, or heavy expenditures for family festivities—were in fact changeable.

A major problem faced by the poor everywhere is the loss of land to moneylenders, who are often at the same time the major landowners. All it takes, ABED explains, is one obstructed delivery in childbirth. A man has to pay Tk500 to the doctor; to do so he must mortgage his land

at exorbitant interest—and loses it in no time. BRAC therefore seeks to help the workshops find alternative financial sources, such as cooperative credit unions. Another problem is insufficient wages for manual labor. BRAC helped the laborers in Manikganj understand that to acquire some control over wages they had to organize themselves at harvest time when labor was short. The first time this happened, a whole village had no means of livelihood for 15 or 20 days. When the landlords attempted to import workers from other areas, the villagers blocked them. But from this experience the laborers came to realize that in order to succeed they would have to organize the surrounding villages so that laborers from one village would not attempt to take the place of workers from another. Thus of their own accord they went to neighboring areas to organize their leaders. Now says ABED, "We only have to organize in one or two core nucleus villages and it spreads from there. If you have 200 villages and you organize 15, you've organized the rest."

Action does not stop with the initial incident, however. BRAC found that many false criminal charges were being brought against leaders of the landless by powerful landlords, and began providing legal services in these situations. It is now trying to get the groups themselves to put aside legal aid funds from their own savings.

ABED recognizes dangers inherent in the system of self-help. It is important, he notes, to find the kind of program which will create solidarity in the group, not divisiveness. For example, if an area of 200 families can support only 40 cows, you don't help 40 families obtain cows, because you create a split between them and the other 160 families. He also points out that the sense of cooperation achieved in group workshops is very fragile and can disintegrate quickly if it has not reached a level where the people themselves feel a strong vested interest in keeping the cooperative spirit going. This fragility, in turn, makes it difficult for BRAC workers to extricate themselves from a program and turn it over to the people concerned.

ABED feels, however, that after a decade, the Sulla Project has reached the point of self-sufficiency and the BRAC-organized groups have reached a point of self-direction. "When we find landless groups [instead of the moneylender-landlord elite] adjudicating in various village conflicts," he says, "we feel they're becoming powerful. When women organize themselves to fight against divorces or multiple marriages, or when village laborers fight to divert a road . . . that would, if built, take employment away from them, they are using their power." ABED further points to examples of landless groups identifying programs the government should undertake, rather than accepting what comes. They have also managed to see that "no wheat disappears from stores and that it is actually used for [food-for-work] programs which they have planned and carried out themselves." In some cases they have demanded certain services, such as medical care, which a government agency is supposed to provide but has not.

A year or two after phasing out, BRAC consultants will return to Sulla to see whether group leadership is joint or whether the groups have been taken over by an elite. You not only have to have leadership whom people can trust, ABED notes, and who are responsive to group members, but "you have to have a number of leaders within each group, not just one leader who tends to get a 'big head' quickly." Joint leadership comes about when expertise is divided: when, for example, one person becomes knowledgeable in health education, a second in power pump mechanics and a third in functional education. Aside from reducing the danger of one powerful leader emerging, this system also reduces the group's dependence on the professional doctor or mechanic of the village.

BRAC has been active in attempting to set up cooperatives in the areas in which it is working. Essential to the success of these cooperatives, ABED believes, is, again, joint responsibility—for policy, management and use of money. Corruption and mismanagement beset cooperatives in the form of private use of the society's savings, misallocation of inputs, credit facilities, etc. Therefore all decisions concerning acquisition and spending of money must be taken jointly. Some money may be spent individually, but only to the extent that group interest and solidarity are not reduced. This works ultimately to the advantage of the individual. For example, if the group helps a woman buy and raise a cow as part of a joint program and the cow dies, the group, not the woman alone, would assume the financial loss.

Aside from helping organize cooperatives geared to the interest of the poor, BRAC has been involved in providing credit for specific projects. Here, too, ABED has insisted on fostering self-reliance. "We don't give credit too fast or too easily," he says. "We wait until the group has done some joint activities with its own resources; then when we know they can operate together, BRAC may provide partial credit. The labor-wage part of the scheme is usually financed by the group itself." Credit is advanced at 12 percent interest, far better than the 200 to 300 percent charged by moneylenders. BRAC has found the repayment rate to be fairly good except in years when flooding has ruined village crops. At such times the loan has to be rescheduled over three or four years and the interest is often written off.

In 1978 BRAC decided a bank was needed to serve the landless who could not provide security for loans. The bank would provide group loans for group projects. However, since the banks were nationalized the government declined to give BRAC a permit to open a new one in the private sector. Instead it gave BRAC permission to operate a "rural credit and training project." Accordingly, branches were set up in eight thanas throughout Bangladesh to provide training, logistical support and money for the landless. Six more branches are proposed for 1981. The whole project will cost US$3.7 million over a five year period and will be funded by NOVIB (Netherlands Organization for International Assistance), with financing from the Dutch government. The money will also be used as a revolving fund for loans (presently at 15 percent interest) for the landless. In July 1980 the Bangladesh government reopened the banks to private enterprise, so the project may well be converted into a banking system.

Ideally, as the capability of the different groups organized by BRAC increases, along with their capital requirements, they will be able to go to various institutions, such as government agricultural and industrial banks, for credit. They should, in short, outgrow small development agencies like BRAC.

As the years have gone by many of the early BRAC workers have left and recruitment of new staff members has become increasingly difficult. The 400-member staff is still recruited from university graduates. ABED always chooses generalists since BRAC has its own approach to rural development. The graduates who have applied since 1974 tend to be those of lower scholastic standing than the earlier candidates; practicality has replaced idealism among university students, and jobs are more readily available than they were in the immediate postwar years.

From a total of 400 applicants today, BRAC will weed out, by a series of examinations and interviews, all but about 10—and of those perhaps five will stay. During the interviews each applicant is scrutinized for his/her communication ability and attitude toward rural development, the likelihood of his leaving to take work elsewhere, and whether the economic pressure in his family is "just right"; BRAC finds that the "poor, but not too poor," do best. After the graduates are recruited they get a short orientation course and are then sent straight to the field to be apprenticed to senior workers. After about three months they are brought again to the BRAC training center where they find their courses to be far more meaningful, seen as they then are in the light of actual experience.

Research and evaluation remain an important aspect of BRAC's overall operations. Researchers are drawn, not only from the field staff, but from the villagers themselves. Research involves villagers in trying to find out, for example, how the village power structure, which handles the distribution of resources, actually works. Field workers on the BRAC staff collate this information into village studies, which also include such information as kinship relationships and ideologies. Having field workers rather than office staff write up these case studies affords them firsthand information on the problems they have to deal with. Furthermore, by studying the peasants' perceptions of certain problems, the field workers gain respect for the sophistication of those perceptions. The fund for research and institutional development is provided by the Ford Foundation (US$224,000).

Currently BRAC administers 17 different projects and activities. In the aftermath of the 1974 floods a project to organize destitute women in Jamalpur (OXFAM America, US$90,000) was added to the Sulla and Manikganj efforts. In this instance also, women were organized into functional education classes, mothers' clubs, savings or economic groups. Certain activities such as block printing of saris or rolling cigars were introduced to generate cash income, while others such as improved techniques of poultry raising were intended to add to the nutritive value of their families' diets. All programs were geared to increasing the ability of the women to think creatively and to influence their environment.

Family planning efforts are a high priority in this, as in other areas, since Bangladesh's population growth rate is 3.3 percent per annum, outstripping the annual 2.5 percent increase in food production. "At the present rate," ABED points out, "Bangladesh will double its population in 20 years and will be meeting its own food requirements by only 60 percent." ABED feels government programs on family planning have had only a five percent success rate because of their failure to emphasize face-to-face motivation and follow-up services. BRAC, for its part, has trained Lady Family Planning Organizers (LFPO) in the villages who go from house to house in their own villages to motivate their clients to enroll in family planning clinics; they follow up with referrals to paramedics or doctors in the case of side effects or complications.

In 1977 BRAC set up a Training and Resource Center for villagers with a combined grant of US$392,000 from OXFAM (UK and America) and Community Aid Abroad (Australia). The center is located in Savar, about 20 miles from the already existing Center for Rural Development Workers in Dacca. The new center has dormitory facilities for 90 trainees, as well as demonstration plots, fish ponds, a hatchery and a duck and poultry farm. Trainers are recruited from experienced field workers who act in this capacity for a few years and then return to the field so that they, too, are not infected with "elitism."

BRAC is also involved in an Urban Resettlement Program to Squatters in Dacca. Funds for this are provided by the United Nations Development Program, while the government provides the infrastructure and BRAC carries out the actual community development pro gram. In addition, BRAC started, with the aid of a US$26,000 gram from OXFAM, a Pilot Project for Oral Rehydration Therapy for diarrhea that was successfully tested in 1979-80 on 30,000 families in three thanas; it has become its largest project. Now funded by the govern meets of Switzerland and Sweden, this three-year program will require US$2.4 million and 1,700 workers to reach 2.5 million households in 5 districts of Bangladesh. BRAC intends to teach 13 million mothers how to make and administer the oral rehydration fluid. In 1979 BRAC also responded to the government's request to assist in temporary emergency relief and drought projects.

The variety of sources and magnitude of the aid ABED has marshalled for BRAC has prompted his friends teasingly to call him "a supermarket." In a situation of widely acknowledged great need where international and national private and government aid agencies stand ready to assist proven performers ABED and BRAC appear to have been standouts of administration, innovation and follow through.

Despite the ease with which it has solicited funds, BRAC has be gun to gear itself toward increasing its own financial self-reliance. ABEE observed how India in 1975 decided that all voluntary funding agencies must channel donations through the government. Fearing that Bangladesh would follow India's example within the next five or ten years he and his fellow staffers turned their attention to money-earning schemes. In order to ensure salaries for the core staff and funds for re search, they seek ultimately to earn at least one half of the US$1 million spent for such purposes each year.

They settled first on a commercial printing press, reasoning the, it could begin by handling their own journal and all the functional education materials they were developing. NOVIB and OXFAM Canada provided the initial funding of US$395,000 to set up the press (including the head office building in which it is housed), which now earns about US$100,000 annually. Another project is a shop in Dacca called Aarong (Village Fair), set up in 1979 as a marketing outlet for handicrafts from the villages under BRAC's aegis. The shop was funded by at für der Welt (US$95,000) and Interpares of Canada (US$55,000); one year it became self-sustaining, excluding repayment of the initial grants.

In addition BRAC has developed a proposal for building a cold storage center for potatoes. The initial funds (US$1.43 million) will provided by the United Nations Capital Development Fund; the project is expected to return around US$250,000 a year.

BRAC now owns its own five-story building in Dacca, built on the land acquired for the printing press. When quarters for the press were first proposed the Dacca Improvement Authority asked BRAC to conduct a foundation suitable for a higher building. The additional four floors, completed in 1980, give BRAC 15,000 square feet of office space.

BRAC charges all projects it administers about seven percent of project costs for overhead, including staff salaries and headquarters expenses, an extremely low rate and indicative of ABED's financial management ability. ABED allows himself a stipend comparable to a government salary, which is far below comparable business salaries. But in line with the government practice he has a rental allowance for his house and car. He lives in Dacca because it is centrally located. From there he can readily travel to various BRAC projects around the country as he does constantly. Living in the capital he is also able to keep in close touch with the government, international lending bodies, and other voluntary agencies.

Far from allowing competition or conflicts to arise between BRAC d other volunteer groups, ABED sees to it that his organization provides support for groups requesting it—usually in the form of training and published materials. An admirer who has worked closely with ABED and his organization is struck with how BRAC "shares the tenor of Mr. ABED's personal style—quiet, calm, humble yet forceful. Mr. ABED never rises to any challenge or criticism; neither does BRAC. Mr. ABED can always explain the objective and rationale behind a decision or course of action; every staff member in BRAC, to a greater or lesser degree learns to do the same."

Another quality the same observer noted: ABED—and BRAC— have profound faith in the poor. "To believe in the potential of the rural poor goes against the grain of a very deep-rooted value system," comments. "The government and the rich believe the poor are poor cause they are ignorant; the poor believe the poor are ignorant; most BRAC staff before they join BRAC believe the poor are poor because they are ignorant. But all the programs and activities in BRAC are directed to unleashing the potential and inherent capacities of the poor—and the potential has been unleashed and is being felt."

September 1980 Manila

REFERENCES:

Abed, Fazle Hasan. "Approaches to Mobilizing Villagers' Latent Capabilities." Presentation made to Group Discussion. Transcript. Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation Manila September 2, 1980. (Typewritten.)

Brehmer, Margaret, et al. "Anandapur Village: BRAC comes to town," Reports. Dacca: Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC). No. 13, November 1976.

"BRAC, Summary of Current Activities." Dacca: BRAC. N.d. (Mimeographed memorandum.)

Clark, Leon. "A Consultant's Journal: Bangladesh," Reports. Dacca: BRAC. No. 13, November 1976.

Faaland, Just and J. R Parkinson. Bangladesh: the Test Case of Development. Bangladesh: C. Hurst and Co. and University Press Ltd. 1976.

"Jamalpur Women’s Programme" Dacca: BRAC. N.d. (Mimeographed.)

"Manikganj Project Report, Phase I (April 1976-March 1979)." Dacca: BRAC N.d. (Mimeographed.)

"Mirfur Bastuhara Resettlement Programme" Dacca: BRAC. August, 1978. (Mimeographed.)

"Peasant Perceptions: Famine." Dacca: BRAC July 1979. (Mimeographed.)

"Sulla Project: Report on Phase II, November 1, 1972. December 31, 1975." Dacca: BRAC. N.d. (Mimeographed.)

"Sulla Project: Report on Phaso III." Dacca: BRAC. 1975. (Mimeographed.)

Interviews with Fazle and Ayesha Hasan Abed and interviews with and letters from persons acquainted with BRAC.