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.
A preview of the unpublished book A CIVILIZATION WITHOUT A VISION WILL PERISH: AN INDEPENDENT SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH by David Willis at willisdavid167@gmail.com.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 64). This blog is a 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 largest and most successful NGO
In Freedom from Want: The Remarkable Success Story of BRAC, the Global Grassroots Organization That’s Winning the Fight Against Poverty by Ian Smillie, we learn that BRAC is possibly the largest and most successful NGO, working in health, education, social enterprise development and microfinance. BRAC’s story shows how social enterprise can trump corruption and how purpose, innovation and clear thinking can overcome the most entrenched injustices that society can offer, transforming disaster into development and despair into hope.
To Bangladesh in 1972
In 1972, shortly after the Liberation War, I was sent by CARE to Bangladesh to work on a self-help housing cooperative. The project was massive, but it failed because we had almost no idea what we were doing. I heard about BRAC, a Bangladeshi development organization about which people spoke with awe.
I have never found the same organization twice
Over the years I have been privileged to return to Bangladesh many times, often to work with BRAC on a project design, an evaluation, or a report. I have never found the same organization twice. On each visit there is always something new:
10,000 more schools
a dairy
a university
a functional cure for tuberculosis
In 2007 BRAC’s microfinance lending topped a billion dollars.
One of the most hostile climates in the world
The amazing thing about all of BRAC’s achievements is that they have been accomplished in one of the most hostile climates in the world – hostile in every sense of the word: meteorologically, economically, and politically. And now BRAC is taking its lessons to other Asian countries and Africa.
Diamonds fueling war
My first assignment was teaching in Sierra Leone, in the country’s wild-west mining region. Nobody foresaw that the country would descend into political mismanagement, corruption, and a decade-long war that killed tens of thousands and displaced more than half the population. Nobody could foresee that the diamonds would fuel this war and others like it in Angola, the Congo, and Liberia.
Responsibility for the diamond wars
In 1999 I served on a United Nations Security Council expert panel that studied the connection between diamonds and weapons. In West Africa, responsibility for the diamond wars could be laid primarily at the feet of Liberia’s warlord president, Charles Taylor, a man who played a major role in destroying his own country and the lives of millions of people in others.
Lasting development to the very poor people in very poor countries
BRAC has recently started to work in Sierra Leone and Liberia, where it is conveying the lessons learned in Bangladesh: that development is not about buildings; it is about what goes on inside the buildings, and inside the heads of the people in the buildings. It is about persistence, hard work, enterprise, optimism, common sense, and values. These things, when correctly applied in the right measure, can bring lasting development to the very poor people in very poor countries.