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.