7/16: We're starting to make serious progress

Things are getting started a lot faster than we had planned, but things are really starting to get going and it’s all very exciting. We’ve had three focus groups to start talking to women about the project, one with a group of sex workers and one with a group of migrant workers, and one with a group of former garment workers, some of whom now have their own very small businesses. All of the women we have met with have been absolutely incredible and we are learning so much from them about their lives and Bangladeshi culture and the ways in which they struggle to support their families and themselves. The women in last group we met with have turned out to be exactly who we were looking for to participate in the project, and they are maybe even more excited than we are about working with us. All of them were brought to us by a woman who works at Nari Jibon and who we have become very close to. Her name is Ruma Begum, but everyone calls her “Khala,” which is an affectionate name meaning “Auntie” in Bangla. Khala used to work in a garment factory with these women and they have remained very close. (Here is a picture of Khala).

Khala’s personal story is really incredible. She lived in a Bangladeshi village and was married for many years until her husband died and she was left with nothing. Bangladeshi tradition says that she should have married her husband’s brother, but she didn’t want to and so she ran away and got a job at a garment factory in Dhaka. About a year and a half ago she started working at Nari Jibon, helping out around the office and keeping things in order for everyone (she also makes the best tea). When she came to Nari Jibon, she was illiterate and didn’t speak a word of English. Now she can read and write Bangla and speaks enough English to be able to communicate well with us. Khala says that she is in her 50’s, but we suspect otherwise: she was the first child of a father who is now 107. Khala shared with us the notebook she uses to practice writing English. The first page says: “My name is Ruma Begum. I worked in garments for 18 years. I was the woman who ironed the clothes. I am a strong woman.” Khala is one of the sweetest women we have ever met. She takes care of us well, and says that we are like her own children. Khala believes strongly in the cooperative business project and so she has done a lot to help us. She even gave the women who we’re working with 200 taka (the equivalent of less than 3 dollars, but for Khala probably enough to buy a month’s worth of rice) so that they could afford the rickshaw fare to come meet with us on their lunch breaks. When we found out that she did this, we of course paid her back, but it means a lot to us that she is that committed to our work here.

The twelve women who Khala brought us already have some basic business skills, which is a definite plus. Also, a factor which impressed us immediately is that they all trust and respect each other, and have some very good ideas about cooperation. They have one woman who they trust as a leader, who does a lot of the talking for them, who is very savvy—she understood what we were saying about a cooperative immediately and even described some of our fundamental ideas to us before we even had the chance to explain them ourselves.

At this point we have met with these women a few times and are already getting involved with serious some serious planning with them. We talked to them about the problems they have experienced with their work and their small businesses and what they need to improve their business skills. Upon asking “What do you need?” one woman, Hasina, who is intelligent and tough, but very sweet, said “Strength!” We were surprised to hear that they had a lot of ideas about what they need, in fact, including skills in long-term business planning, accounting, understanding how to cooperatively make decisions, and for some of them basic literacy skills.

One of the obstacles we have encountered since we arrived is that the business class currently being taught at Nari Jibon is going to need some re-vamping before it can really provide the skills these women will need to start a major cooperative business. Therefore, our first task is going to have to be to develop the business curriculum. It’s good that we’re finding it out early because now our work to develop the microcredit program will also hopefully be of great benefit to the school itself. We’ve already got some great contacts here and have been talking to people all over Dhaka about how to develop this curriculum and be sure that it can most effectively provide the women with the skills they need to run a successful cooperative. We’ve been talking to a lot of great people and it’s been good to get input from other programs so that we’re not trying to reinvent the wheel.

So we’re going to start our business classes this week, which we are excited but sort of nervous about. Basically, the women in the group work every day from 6am to 11pm, with a break between noon and 2. So we’re going to have the classes a couple times a week during their break times, which I can’t imagine giving up if I were them, given all the work they do anyway, but they are really serious about making this happen. They have a goal to have the business up and running before Ramadan (which will probably start in late September) because that’s a really good business month (like Holiday time in America). It’s ambitious, but I’m confident that we can make it happen, and their enthusiasm is really exciting.

We had an opportunity to go to the small businesses that some of the women run in a neighborhood in Dhaka called East Rampura. Khala took us and showed us around everywhere. It’s basically a slum neighborhood, and even for Dhaka it was a very different experience for us. We were overwhelmed by how welcoming they were to us and how comfortable we felt with them, hanging out in their sari shops and vegetable stalls. Check out some pictures of our visit here and here.

7/6: Greetings from Bangladesh

We jumped into our work at Nari Jibon right away, as a shortage of English teachers meant that we started teaching literally the moment we walked in the door. It feels like things have been moving non-stop ever since. We have now taken over two English classes full time, and have been helping out here and there with a few of the other classes as well. It already feels like we have become part of daily life here. The women have been so unbelievably welcoming to us, and they are eager to learn about us and our life in America. (see some pictures of our students here)

We’re already getting started on talking to people about the microcredit project and things are getting really exciting. We have met with a number of groups of women to talk about the project and get their ideas. Last week we brought in a group of female migrant workers (in Bangladesh, that means that they are people who leave the country for 6 or 7 years at a time, to places like Malaysia and Dubai to work in factories or do domestic work there). If the cooperative business project could provide them with options that are better than leaving Bangladesh for years at a time (many of them are married and have families here), then that would be really great. We have been working with Sheikh Rumana who is the head of BOMSA, an organization which serves migrant workers, and she is really excited to get returning migrant workers involved in the project. She had the great idea for the cooperative business to be a small department store, with a number of different services like tailoring, fabric sales, and other things. The exciting thing about this is that it gives women the opportunity to pursue different things they might be really excited about, or have a particular talent in. For example, one woman we met with didn’t speak any English, except she kept saying “beauty parlor” because that was something that she really wanted to do. When we said that we could have a beauty parlor inside the department store, she was so excited! It was really cool to see her enthusiasm about the project and how it could incorporate her plans and goals.

The overall impression seems to be excitement and curiosity, and we’ve been surprised to see how innovative people seem to think the idea is. We will update again soon on our progress.

Getting adjusted to life in Dhaka has been a huge project in itself – the pace of life here is different than the pace of life at home. Yesterday there was a “hartal” which is basically a general strike, and we were forced to stay inside all day. We have had less access to the internet than we might have expected, not only because of unreliable internet connections, but also because of what they call “load shedding,” which is where the power goes off for hours at a time at any time of the day or night. So that’s been interesting to get used to, but we think we’re adjusting to it all pretty well.