Defining the Problem, Identifying Solutions

Mohammad Zakaria

Gana Gabeshana o Unnayan Foundation (GoUF), the Participatory Research and Development Foundation, is a local non-governmental organization (NGO) active in southwestern Bangladesh. As part of a long-term strategy to alleviate poverty, we have been working to promote grassroots democracy and to help local-level government officials serve the citizens more effectively.

GoUF has identified a number of problems that prevent such effectiveness:

• Citizens are alienated from the government. In the past, heroes, kings, and military dictators told the people what to do. As a result, the people have learned to feel helpless and the government has become paternalistic: “The people are helpless, they need to be helped. The people are without ideas, they need to be given ideas. The people are without resources, they need to be given resources as mercy.”
• The people do not know what resources are available. Despite huge investment in the local infrastructure, the people do not have enough information about who is doing what and where to find help.
• Poor relationships with government workers:

1. Government officials are frequently transferred and the people have to build rapport all over again with a new officer.
2. The job requires many more hours than the people actually work. This is discouraging for workers who are sincere and devoted to their jobs.
3. Non-local supervisors are sometimes threatened by the local power structure, and make compromises in order to survive and keep their jobs.
4. NGOs say government officials lack the skills to handle flexible, field-oriented development activities and need to be better trained.
5. Lack of village-level democracy. Even though the union parishad members - the people's locally-elected representatives - could be the best advocates for the voters' rights, they spend much of their time and energy with Members of Parliament (MPs) and other party leaders, and ignore the people they are supposed to serve.

The poor are not incapable of helping themselves, they are just out of practice. GoUF believes that changing this mindset is the basis of a new beginning. GoUF advocates a knowledge-intensive development approach that starts at the bottom, with the poor themselves:

• Gathering information. GoUF involves people in collecting and collating data about poverty. This new collective knowledge will provide clues to how they might work together to overcome poverty. This type of participatory research naturally evolves to the planning stage.

• Education program. GoUF runs an education program for semi-specialization in areas that target the needs of the village and the poor. After graduation, Village Experts teach other group members what they have learned in weekly group meetings and formal trainings.

• Planning. Village participatory planning is done collectively by the villagers. They approach different local-level government officers or employees, and ask for help in implementing their ideas through training, technical assistance, and advice.

• Training. GoUF provides small loans and micro-credit to aid some group members, mostly women, in starting new ventures. GoUF then invites local-level government officers to provide training to the loanees. Trainee group members come with their own information from their respective villages and present their needs. This strategy inspires many government officials to offer ideas and builds rapport between them and the group.

• Communication. Most government officials begin with negative ideas. Through conversation, however, they tend to move toward the positive. We must have more than one conversation. We can return with follow-up questions and concrete action plans. The most important thing is to keep talking. The more we talk, the more clearly we will be able to understand each other.

Contributed by Mohammad Zakaria, 1994 Bangladesh Advocacy Fellow and former Executive Director of Gana Gabeshana o Unnayan Foundation (GoUF, and current Regional Manager for ActionAid Bangladesh). Some observations emerged from the Capacity Building Initiative for NGOs (CABIN), jointly operated by CAPRe and GoUF and supported by the Swiss Development Corporation (SDC). To contact Mr. Zakaria, email zakaria@citecho.net or fax (880-2) 815-962. For more information on GoUF, contact 253, Airport Road Puraton Kosba, Arabpur, Jessore 7400, Bangladesh, tel. (880-421) 72798, fax (880-2) 815-962.

Information on this page came from Advocacy for Social Justice: A Global Action and Reflection Guide, now available in English and Spanish from Kumarian Press.