HEADLINES OF THE DAY: ANOTHER 15,000 PEOPLE DIED YESTERDAY BECAUSE THEY WERE TOO POOR TO LIVE. THE RICH INCREASED THEIR WEALTH YESTERDAY BY $0.3 BILLION. THE 21st CENTURY VERSION OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION IS ONE DAY NEARER.
“O Ye rich ones on earth! The poor in your midst are My trust; guard ye My trust, and be not intent only on your own ease.”
Bahá’u’lláh
A preview of the unpublished book A CIVILIZATION WITHOUT A VISION WILL PERISH: AN INDEPENDENT SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH by David Willis at willisdavid167@gmail.com. CHAPTER 1: INDIFFERENCE TO POVERTY (Part 75). This blog is a continuation of the review of FREEDOM FROM WANT: THE REMARKABLE SUCCESS STORY OF BRAC, THE GLOBAL GRASSROOTS ORGANIZATION THAT’S WINNING THE FIGHT AGAINST POVERTY by Ian Smillie published 2009.
The pilot had worked
Monitoring for results was crucial, not just to the teachers, but to BRAC if this pilot was to be taken beyond three small thanas. Monitors were hired especially for the purpose. Remarkably they found that 90% of the 58,000 mothers, who lived in 662 villages, scored either A or B in the follow-up monitoring. The pilot had worked.
BRAC set up its own field laboratories
Over time, the program was refined in several ways. Teaching aids were introduced in the form of posters and flip charts. The ten points were revised several times and were finally reduced to seven. It was decided to include men as trainees because, in some places, their exclusion had led to skepticism about the message being promoted. The program was taken to primary and secondary schools, and the OTEP message was broadcast on radio and television. Because the cost of sending samples to the Cholera Lab for testing would have been prohibitive as the program grew, BRAC set up its own field laboratories in area offices under Cholera Lab supervision. Monitoring was key. Even though BRAC was now doing its own laboratory testing, 10% of the samples still went to the Cholera Lab for backup testing. When the OTEP ended in November 1990, BRAC’s simple solution had been taken to 12 million households in almost every village of Bangladesh.
It needed energy, enthusiasm, and a willingness to learn
Years later, starting a program in Tanzania in 2006, BRAC applied the same principle, recruiting bright, young people straight out of high school and university and giving them the training it deemed necessary. It is a simple formula, one used in many other walks of life. Primarily it needed energy, enthusiasm, and a willingness to learn. The development of commitment in the workers was important, along with training, performance-based bonuses on top of the basic salary, and careful monitoring for results.
Training, monitoring, in-built checks, research, and evaluations became standard fare
Going from one village to the next was more than simple replication. It was about improving the product every time an opportunity presented itself. BRAC’s development of in-house training facilities, teachers, and curricula served it well in other programs. The creation of its own testing labs became an approach used repeatedly in other projects. Training, monitoring, in-built checks, research, and evaluations, which were all hallmarks of OTEP, became standard fare in all of BRAC’s endeavors as it moved from the experimental 1970s into a period of rapid growth in the 1980s.
He has acted as a consultant to the World Bank
Mushtaque Chowdrey would later return to his studies. He was admitted to Harvard but opted for the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where he could complete a PhD in two years. He was the first of many who would be sent off into the world for a doctorate in studies that would be of use to BRAC and Bangladesh. Mushtaque was the founding director of BRAC’s research and evaluation division, and would go on to author many papers and books. He would become dean of the BRAC University School of Public Health. He did get to Harvard, not to study, but for a yearlong sabbatical, where he co-authored A Simple Solution with Richard Cash. He has acted as a consultant to the World Bank, the Red Cross, and a wide variety of governments and development organizations.