So my school required me to do a final reflection paper, here are the results!
Introduction
I spent my summer
working for the international development organization BRAC in Dhaka,
Bangladesh under their pilot Integrated Development Programme (IDP). The
majority of my time was dedicated to their Haor program, for which I created a
promotional video about their boat school program, updated their databases, and
edited the grammar of their action research articles. After spending the summer
working in one of the largest NGO’s in the world, I learned that development in
poor rural areas is really an integrated problem and the three most effective
solutions to achieve the first stages of development are agriculture,
sanitation, and education.
Haor Region
My department was
geographically focused on the most hard-to-reach areas of the county, which
included both the Haor and indigenous areas. While I gained knowledge and
helped both parts of the program, my focus was in the Haor basin flood plain projects,
particularly in the district of Baniachang. These lands flood for six months
out of the year, shrinking acres upon acres of crop lands into small islands.
The lack of mobility during these periods stymies both education and labor
productivity, and the presence of such abundance of water creates a population
especially susceptible to waterborne diseases. Because of their remote location
and the difficulties involved in physical travel, many aid organizations have
overlooked these areas. Additionally, methods of communication with these
villagers are often difficult as they have been isolated from mainstream
culture and the people are rather resistant to change. As a solution, BRAC
created an integrated development program that initiates multiple poverty
alleviation strategies, WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene), family planning,
education, and agriculture, all at once.
Integrated Development
After witnessing
the effectiveness of IDP, it really helped solidify the lessons learned from
CMC about how poverty is a multifaceted problem and requires more than one
solution to start alleviating its stress. This is reflected in how UN
Millennium Development goals are related to one another based on the
consistency between each one.[1] These
villagers, most of whom are illiterate, are isolated from the mainstream
population of Bangladesh and are often forgotten in the nation’s attempts to
meet the Millennium Development Goals. In order to create a successful,
intensive program, BRAC needed to create a program that would help multiple
generations at once and raise the standard of living as a whole. In this manner
they avoid the misconception that a nation’s growth equates to poverty
alleviation because “Growth is necessary for poverty reduction but is not
sufficient: it must be accompanied by an improvement in the living standard of
the poor.”[2] The
three main areas BRAC focused on for the first wave of development and
integration of Baniachang members into mainstream society were agriculture, WASH,
and education.
Agriculture
Creating a
sustainable and flexible job market was one of the first priorities of IDP. The
program recognized that without a steady income, it would be difficult to raise
the standards of living in the Haor region.
“It is suggested
that if social and spatial equity are to be achieved, a broad-based strategy
based on the needs of the rural population is preferable, at least in the early
stages of rural development, to a focal point IRD approach emphasizing
increases in agricultural production.”[3]
The difficulty with creating new
job markets in this particular region is that their “broad-based strategy” was
very different from many of the other rural populations because of the unique environmental
conditions and climate in their area. Editing the action research articles for
the various Village Development Organizations helped me better understand the
different programs BRAC initiated. Annual jobs were created by introducing
alternative methods of duck rearing, where different villagers worked with
ducks at different stages of their lifespans and on a need-based demand. For
example, one village family would be in charge of caring for the eggs, another
would be in charge of caring for the hatchlings, and another would be in charge
of fully grown ducks. In doing so, the villagers were forced to cooperate and
work with their neighbors, which increased productivity and decreased
competition within the small area.
The creation of an
annual job market was important; however it wasn’t a feasible solution for the
entire Haor region. Working to create sustainable job markets also meant that
solutions had to be created using the drastic environmental changes to the
farmers’ benefit. For example, a seasonal agricultural solution was using the
water to their benefit by introducing fisheries. There is a high consumption of
fish within the country and by turning the flooded land into an
income-generating project, agricultural production was more stabilized during
the monsoon. Another type of seasonal solution actually shifted farmers away
from agriculture during the time their land was flooded and persuaded them to
meet the demands of needed transportation by boat. The natural creation of hatis (temporary islands created during
the flood season) renders a great number of villagers immobile during these
periods of the year as they are trapped on islands but too poor to own boats.
BRAC’s sponsorship of various boatmen created competition to provide
transportation services rather than a monopoly, and also allowed more people to
access methods of transport off their island.
WASH
One of the biggest
challenges to tackle in this area was sanitation. After speaking with the
locals and the BRAC field officers, they often commented on how significantly living
conditions on a hati, improved once
the WASH program was successfully executed and maintained. Water plays a
significant role in the daily lives of these villagers, and is also the biggest
cause of death and illness. Before, people would drink, wash clothes, bathe
livestock, and dispose of garbage all in the same body of water. Many children
would die of dysentery infections. An initiative in the 1980s to provide clean
water to Bangladesh influenced many districts to implant drinking wells. This
was largely successful as “using groundwater instead of surface water is
thought to have contributed significantly to halving infant and under 5
mortality rates.” [4]
In the Haor region BRAC’s development
program installed multiple drinking wells in effort to bring clean drinking
water to these villagers to. However, studies show that “up to 57 million of
Bangladesh's 130 million inhabitants are drinking water that contains harmful
concentrations of arsenic.”[5]
Unfortunately, the Haor is no exception; these statistics are sobering and the
current unsustainable solution is to build a new drinking well when another one
is considered to be contaminated with arsenic.
Placing latrines
and wells throughout the hatis was
not enough to change the sanitation status of these villagers. Field workers
had to come in and teach them about sanitary practices multiple times, until they
became a customary action of the people. Changing tradition is one of the
hardest things to do, according to the field workers we interviewed. Until
results are shown, it’s hard to convince people of the benefits of washing your
hands or using a latrine based off of pictures in a book. However, after time
sanitation became a custom of the hati
and out of the three interviews we conducted on-site, each woman listed hygiene
as the greatest benefit of the IDP program during these past three pilot years.
Education
One
of the most significant ways to help develop a region is to educate the people
living there, especially the women and girls. The second Millennium development
goal is to educate children, but NGO’s largely focus on educating girls because
of the powerful impact they can have on society and development.[6]
For example, “girls
with 8 years of education are 4 times less likely to be married as children,”
“a child born to a literate
mother is 50% more likely to survive past the age of 5,” “educated mothers are
more than twice as likely to send their children to school,” and “a girl with
an extra year of education can earn 20% more as an adult.” [7]By simply educating women,
which often in Bangladesh means forgoing additional working wages coming into
the home or the bride price, a nation can positively impact their family
planning, literacy, infant mortality, and GDP. Additionally, “the
relationship between employment and universal primary education (the second
MDG) is strong both ways: access to employment and the income that it provides
enables private investment in education. Access to education improves the
productivity of employment (though with a time lag in the case of primary
education) and thus increases the (derived) demand for labour.”[8]
In
the Hoar regions, many of the children did not attend school because of the
climate. There is only one school in the entire district, and during the dry
season children would walk miles to go to class. However, when the flooding
begins, it becomes impossible to continue walking to school. Therefore, most
children stop going to school for half the year, fall behind, and eventually
drop out. There is limited boat accessibility, but for low-income villagers,
which is the economic status for majority of the area, the boat fees are too
high a price to pay. Education does not necessarily seem important when the
price interferes with the limited means of survival available to these people.
BRAC’s
solution to this unique environment was to create a school that would travel to
the children, or a boat school. The majority of my internship was spent
researching and creating a promotional video, highlighting the benefits of this
school. I traveled to Baniachang for four days to conduct my interviews and
spend time really understanding the region I was reading about. The idea behind
this innovation was that the boats would remain in a set location when it was
the dry season. Then when the lands started to flood, the boat would travel to
the different hatis to pick up the
children and then continue class on the boat after everyone was present.
At
first, I was really impressed to see that 28 out of the 30 students were girls.
Bangladesh struggles with female education because there is a serious gender
inequality with strong preference from males. Men will carry the family name
and inherit all the land, while girls belong to the in-laws. Therefore most
families do not see the benefit in educating girls because they feel as if it
is wasting their limited money on something that will not benefit the family.
In this culture, girls are worth more if they are married off or earning wages.
The garment district further supports this negative feedback loop by employing
girls, regardless of their age, in sweatshop conditions. BRAC’s determination
to educate girls in the Haor seemed like a step closer to helping Bangladesh
reach its MDG.
However,
after more time was spent in Baniachang, I realized that the district was unique
in more ways that its climate changes. Since the area was so remote and
disconnected from the mainstream culture of Bangladesh, there were no garment
factories nearby but there were lots of boats and fisheries. Work available
here were mainly considered male jobs, and therefore child labor was not
popular amongst the girls, but rather the boys. While BRAC’s program was
helping raise awareness in support of education in a mostly illiterate community,
the natural inclination to target girls in education was actually contrary to
the region’s needs.
I
tried to question my Supervisors about this and when reading the action
research evaluation of the boat school, I pointed out once more the inconsistency
in the statistics with the ratio of boys to girls in school (in favor of girls).
I reasoned that The Millennium Development Goals states education of children,
not education of girls, so if the boys were the ones being denied education and
forced into child labor in the district, BRAC’s goals should change accordingly.
It was very hard to receive a clear, concise answer from them about why this
was not this case, until my Supervisor finally told me that a program directed
at male education frankly wouldn’t receive any funding. I think this was one of
the most important lessons I learned during this internship. It didn’t matter
what the social mission was or what the region really needed, because an NGO is
a type of corporation, and its operation is necessarily dependent on the
funding it receives. Being a
non-government organization, the sources of funding are very often tied to
popular issues or defined goals in a broad program, which may not meet the
needs of a particular region or problem area.
This can result in an inability to effectively address the need due to
lack of funds, which is certainly the case in Baniachang.
Leadership Techniques
Flexibility
One
of the biggest leadership techniques I learned on this trip was the ability to
be flexible and adapt to any situation. The professional environment in
Bangladesh is so drastically different from any of my previous internships. I
had walked in with an expectation that I understood the culture because of my
Bangladeshi heritage, but interestingly enough, working in Bangladesh was a
serious culture shock for me. My past internships had been fast-paced and very
demanding experiences, which was completely opposite of this summer. The entire
building seemed to run consistently late by about thirty to forty minutes. Normally, I would always arrive to a 10 a.m.
meeting around 9:45. However, my very first department meeting did not start
until 10:40 and I ended up waiting close to an hour for everyone else to show
up.
I
also had to learn to be flexible with my co-workers as well. Many of the
assignments I was given depended upon other people’s schedules and free time.
For example, I had to update the data brochures for the entire department by
program. Each co-worker was responsible for their program and despite the fact
that my assignment deadline was by the end of the week, many of my co-workers
did not present me with the information until after my deadline. I went to my Supervisor
and explained to him that I was not able to make the deadline, and he
nonchalantly explained that the deadline was only a formality and that he knew
I would not actually be turning the assignment until the following week.
Remembering to be flexible was extremely important to the development of my
personal leadership skills and adaptability.
Communication
I
learned the importance of maintaining open communication during the internship.
I feel like having good communication skills is a very important leadership
technique, however working with BRAC this summer taught me a new application of
this skill. My partner assigned to my program was from Japan and spoke very
little English and no Bengali. The biggest contribution to this communications-focused
internship was our promotional video. However, discussing ideas with her was
not easy, because she would get nervous every time she had to speak English
beyond a simple conversation or greeting, and then just agree with everything I
said. Rather than making all the executive decisions and taking over the group
project, I wanted to include her opinion and thoughts into our video and
interview as well.
I
learned to use simpler vocabulary and explain my ideas more thoroughly before
asking her about her opinion. Also, interestingly enough, I found that she was
more comfortable with emailing than speaking. So I would often send her an
email of questions or options and communicate with her that way, even though we
were only a cubicle apart. I valued her ideas and opinions, so for me it was
important to find ways of communication where she would feel free to express
herself rather than agree with me. I know that my co-workers at BRAC exhibited
a lot of patience with my Bengali and helping me understand new professional
jargon, so I felt that it would be good to extend the same courtesy to my
intern partner.
Determination
At
first it was really hard to get my co-workers to give me assignments. I was not
used to not having work, and if nothing else, as an intern I expected to
receive much of the “grunt work”. However, even if I asked to file, no one but
my Supervisor would pass assignments to me. This was a very different cultural
behavior that I had never experienced before. For the first week, I just spent my time
asking each person on my floor if they had work to give me. No one really
trusted me as a new intern to do a good job on the assignment, and therefore
felt it was easier to do it themselves. I also realized after a while that
people were reluctant to accept me in this culture because of my age and sex. I
was the youngest person on the floor by at least a decade, and in a minority as
one of the three girls on the floor. I did have Bengali heritage and did speak
the language, but that didn’t help my case in a professional environment
because it put me in a separate category. To them, I wasn’t a foreigner and I
wasn’t a Bengali. I was floating around in some undefined middle ground.
Despite
my shortcomings in the eyes of Bangladeshi society, I was determined to
contribute to the program and help the people on my floor. With the help of my Supervisor,
I was given multiple editing assignments, where using my English and knowledge
of Bengali actually proved to be extremely useful. I could understand the first
drafts and rearrange the sentence structures to match English grammar, where
other interns struggled to understand what the meaning was. Slowly more people
started coming to me for help and asking my opinion on things. Although it took
time, I was finally able to integrate myself into this working environment.
Difficulties Faced
Hierarchy
One
of my biggest challenges in this internship was working with a distinct
hierarchy within the professional environment based off of age and sex. In
Bangladeshi culture elders are given a lot of respect and special treatment
based on their age. Working for BRAC, I realized that this cultural norm had
transitioned into the professional environment. Regardless of job title, if
one’s co-worker was older than oneself, everything written to or said had to be
done with a formality which only became more extreme the more senior he was. As
the youngest person on our floor, I was consistently formal with everyone.
I
was given the task of correcting the head of the action research department’s
English research papers for grammatical errors. I assumed this would be an easy
task before I was handed 100 pages of poorly written evaluations and analysis.
Bengali sentence structures vary drastically from our own, such as the verbs
being used at the end of the sentence, they do not have articles such as “the,”
and there are words that have no literal translation. While it was a great
learning experience about translation, by the time I was done with my
assignment I was really proud of my finished work. However the head of the
action research department was not as pleased. He went directly to my Supervisor
and claimed that I had overstepped my bounds as an intern and my task was to
correct the grammar and not change research terms or meanings of sentences. Of
course, my Supervisor came to me and told me that I had strayed off task and
that the Action Research Head was not satisfied with the work I had done. I was
so confused, but logically asked my Supervisor to give me examples of research
words I had unknowingly changed.
“Beauty-parlaying”
according to the Action Research Head was the verb of beauty parlor. This was a
research term and my ignorance in the field had caused me to fail to understand
such specific nuances of the program. I also had the audacity to rearranges
sentence structures in English so that the verb was no longer the last word in
the sentence. After listening to my Supervisor go through the various explanations,
each reason seemed more ludicrous than the next. At first, I took my time
explaining to my Supervisor why I had made the changes and tried to tell him
that there was no such thing as “beauty-parlaying” according to the Oxford English
dictionary. I thought I had made my point and asked my Supervisor if he would
please explain that to the Action Research Head. However, my Supervisor told me
that despite the fact that he agreed with me, he could not say anything in my
defense because his co-worker was his senior and he held a higher education
degree with his PhD. While I did not apologize for my work as suggested by my Supervisor,
I let my Supervisor know that if the Action Research Head was not satisfied
with my work he could revert the draft to that of the other intern’s edits
before my own and I could provide him with that draft if he had deleted them
already.
Lack of Support
From
this incident, I learned a very important lesson about leadership in an office
environment. In order to be a successful leader, the most important behavior is
to support those working for you. After that incident I lost a lot of trust and
respect for my Supervisor. As an intern I had practically no power in the
department and depended on my Supervisor. He was the one who taught me about
the different cultural practices in an office environment in Bangladesh and he
helped others start giving me more assignments. However, he failed to support
me when it came to my word against that of one of his seniors, even after
admitting that he agreed with me. While I understood that the office hierarchy
is a priority in a Bangladeshi professional environment and that my Supervisor
did not want to threaten his job by breaking such a permeated cultural
boundary, it was a poor behavior of leadership that did not resonate well with
me.
Bad Communication
Another
behavior of leadership that was largely unsuccessful was petty communication
practices. The head of the action research department had assigned me the
document to edit. I felt very strongly that if he was not satisfied with my
work, he should have come to me directly and explained to me what I could have
done differently, instead of going to my Supervisor and complaining. I asked my
Supervisor if there was a reason as to why he did not talk to me first, and was
surprised by the answer that, despite being an organization that works so hard
for gender equality, sexism has yet to be eradicated within their own
departments.
Conclusion
Overall this summer was a
learning process about working in a less developed country. It was really
rewarding to see the concepts and themes I was taught in courses at CMC
supported by this real world application. I was able to carry on intellectual
and legitimate conversations with my co-workers regarding methods of developing
a third world country, and with many different individuals who were my
senior and had much more experience than I in the field.
I was also able to learn in depth about the different methods of raising the
standards of living in a remote village. I was educated on a wide range of
projects, including poultry livestock farming, second chance at learning
primary education, and adolescent income-generating job market creation. My
field visit to Baniachang to interview both the students and villagers about
the changes brought by BRAC programs and their resulting
increased standards of living was one of the most humbling and inspiring
experiences of this entire trip.
Leadership techniques were also very different in this traditional culture and
adjusting to such drastic changes was a good lesson. I was able to further
develop my skills in being flexible and determined, as well as improve
my communication skills in a cross-cultural scenario. However,
I learned that in the future, I will probably not be working for an
organization in Bangladesh. While I do want to give back and help the people
there, I would rather do so on my own terms and at my own pace. It was
difficult to deal with the obvious hierarchy system, sexism, and exaggerated
formalities within a professional environment. I felt like these
characteristics created a lot of unnecessary inefficiency that was difficult
for me to accept. I understand that this is a part of the culture and know that
in the future if I work for an international organization I will have to be
careful and really understand the culture before I choose to have a permanent
job at that location.
Works Cited
Binns, J.
A. and D. C. Funnell, “Geography and Integrated Rural Development,” Geografiska
Annaler. Series B, Human Geography, Vol. 65 (1983), 57-63. JSTOR
Khan, A.R.,
“Employment and Millennium Development Goals: Analytics of the Linkage,” The Bangladesh Development Studies, Vol.
31 (2005), 1-24. JSTOR
MacDonald, Rhona, “Providing
Clean Water: Lessons From Bangladesh: Large Parts Of The World Face An
Unwelcome Choice Between Arsenic And Micro-Organisms,” BMJ: British Medical Journal, Vol. 322 (2001), 626- 627. JSTOR
Pearson
Foundation, “Statistics Used in Girl Rising,” Accessed September 10, 2014. http://girlrising.pearsonfoundation.org/downloads/GR_Curriculum_Resources_STATISTICS.pdf?pdf=GR_Curriculum_Resources_STATISTICS.
GOOGLE
[1]
A R Khan, “Employment and Millennium Development Goals: Analytics of the
Linkage,” The Bangladesh Development Studies, Vol. 31 (2005), 2.
[3]
J. A. Binns and D. C.
Funnell, “Geography and Integrated Rural Development,” Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography, Vol. 65 (1983),
57.
[4] Rhona MacDonald, “Providing Clean Water: Lessons From
Bangladesh: Large Parts Of The World Face An Unwelcome Choice Between Arsenic
And Micro-Organisms,” BMJ: British
Medical Journal, Vol. 322 (2001), 627.
[5] MacDonald, Rhona, “Providing Clean Water: Lessons From
Bangladesh: Large Parts Of The World Face An Unwelcome Choice Between Arsenic
And Micro-Organisms,” 626.
[6]
Khan, A.R., “Employment
and Millennium Development Goals: Analytics of the Linkage,” 3.
[7]
“Statistics Used in Girl Rising,” Pearson Foundation, accessed September 10,
2014, http://girlrising.pearsonfoundation.org/downloads/GR_Curriculum_Resources_STATISTICS.pdf?pdf=GR_Curriculum_Resources_STATISTICS
[8]
Khan, A.R., “Employment
and Millennium Development Goals: Analytics of the Linkage,” 6.
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