Brac
Brac Migration Media Award goes to 16 journalists
Sixteen journalists have received the Brac Migration Media Award for their reporting.
Imran Ahmad, minister of expatriates' welfare and overseas employment, handed over the prizes to the winners in Dhaka Thursday.
Brac introduced the award in 2015 to recognise journalism in the migration sector.
This year the award was given for the seventh time. Daily Samakal's Rajib Ahmed won first place in the newspaper national category. Prothom Alo's Mansoora Hossain came second, and The Financial Express's Arafat Ara and Ajker Patrika's correspondent Md Shahriar Hasan (now working for Dainik Bangla) earned joint third place.
Farooq Munir of Chittagong Khabar won first place in the newspaper regional category, Shariful Islam of Ekushey newspaper was second, and Md Emdad Uliah of weekly Chauddagram newspaper was third.
Read: Daraz hosts Bangladesh Media Innovation Awards 2022
Sabina Yasmin of DBC News, (now working at Independent Television) earned first place in the television news category, Marzia Mumu of Shomoy TV came second, and Masuda Khatun of News24 third. Channel 24's Morshed Hassib Hasan won the award in the television programme category. Md Mostafizur Rahman of Bangladesh Betar won it in the radio category.
The first prize in the online newspaper category was won by Md Jahangir Alam of Jagonews 24. Dainik Prothom Alo's Md Mohiuddin came second, and Dainik Bangla's Jasmine Akhtar and freelancer Rakib Hasan jointly won the third prize.
Each winner receives a crest, certificate of recognition and a cheque for the prize money.
The members of the jury board were Professor Robaet Ferdous of the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism of Dhaka University, ABM Abdul Halim, deputy secretary of the expatriates' welfare and overseas employment ministry, Shaikh Muhammad Refat Ali of International Labour Organization and News24 Television Chief News Editor Shahnaz Munni.
International Youth Day: More youth involvement needed in policymaking, says BRAC
Speakers at a discussion marking International Youth Day on Friday stressed the need for more involvement of youth in policy-making.
Brac Youth Platform organised the discussion on "Unleashing the power of young people towards a new Bangladesh: Ageism as a barrier’ today in the city.
Youth employment, health, access to justice and good governance, and political participation dominated the open discussion, according to a press release.
BRAC's Migration Programme and Youth Initiatives head Shariful Hasan said empowering the youth, their views prevail at BRAC. But unfortunately in Bangladesh, the youth do not dominate the policy-making space.
“The involvement of youth in policy making and decision making is very necessary,” he added.
The speakers also discussed the limited opportunities of the youth and its possible causes at various stages of decision-making, programme management, planning and implementation at the state, social and institutional levels.
Read: Int’l Youth Day: TIB for suitable environment to utilise youths for development
The issues of proper recognition, initiatives and contributions of youths were also emphasised in the discussion.
BRAC’s Youth Platform, a recently initiated programme, is working with several initiatives to assist youths in developing their innovative and creative capacities, ensuring mental and physical health and wellbeing, and promoting their participation in solving social issues.
It has also established the Amra Notun Network to develop and integrate individual and social empowerment and values, innovative skills and leadership qualities of the youths. Through this network, BRAC’s Youth Platform provides regular training to young people, particularly aged from 18 to 25 years, and supports them to implement community projects.
WUDC 2022: Bangladeshi duo wins 'world cup of debating'
Sajid Asbat Khandaker and Sourodip Paul of BRAC A have won the open final of the Belgrade World Universities Debating Championship (WUDC) 2022, the "world cup of debating."
BRAC A was the first team from Bangladesh to make it to the finals and become champions of the world's biggest debating tournament, held annually in English with teams representing universities from across the globe.
The WUDC is governed by the World Universities Debating Council, which sets the parameters of the tournament with the rules of debate, eligibility to participate, and the selection of the annual host. Serbian capital Belgrade hosted the tournament this year. The event was held online due to Covid-19.
Sajid and Sourodip ranked fifth in the open category during the preliminary rounds of the tournament, breaking previous records of any Bangladeshi team.
In the final, streamed live on the Belgrade WUDC Live Streams Facebook page, the Brac University students faced Princeton University, the National University of Singapore, and Ateneo de Manila University.
The WUDC uses the British Parliamentary debate format where 15 minutes prior to each round, a "motion" is announced. Motions are drawn from a wide range of topic areas, including domestic and foreign policy, philosophy, political theory, and so on. Debaters have no idea what the motion will be until it is announced.
Four teams compete in each round, two on each side. Each team in the round has to rebut any arguments made by the two teams on the other side of the motion and do a better job of defending the motion than the other team on its own side.
Each of the four teams comprises two members, each of whom gives one speech with an upper time limit of seven minutes. After all eight speakers have made their case, the adjudicators collectively rank the teams from 1 (best) to 4 (worst).
Also read: Bangladesh wins Unilever Future Leaders' League 2022
Meta partners with BRAC to empower Bangladeshi women, youth online
Meta, formerly known as the Facebook Company, has partnered with BRAC to empower Bangladeshi women and youth on digital platforms.
A skills development program has been launched in its first phase to train 1,000 frontline staff of BRAC who will then upskill 300,000 BRAC program beneficiaries.
Also read: Meta shares ways to connect and take action on Earth Day
The initiative will also equip 60 Youth Ambassadors from BRAC’s Amra Notun Network to engage 1,200 young people to become more aware digital citizens, said a media release on Wednesday.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused people around the world to depend on the internet more than ever. There has been a steep rise in internet use among women and young people in Bangladesh.
The country is also experiencing a parallel increase in cybercrime and online bullying.
Meta will work with BRAC to upskill women and youth with the information, tools and resources they need to have a positive experience online.
This includes a social media campaign to increase awareness among Bangladeshis about the digital landscape.
Sabhanaz Rashid Diya, who leads Public Policy for Bangladesh at Meta, said they know that the digital landscape is changing and transforming rapidly.
“In order for women and youth to have positive experiences online, they require the tools and knowledge to be able to do so. BRAC’s expertise and outreach capacity will help us bolster our efforts to equip Bangladeshi women and young people with the digital skills they need. Through this partnership, we will deepen our work on addressing the needs of women and youth on our platforms.”
Recently, Meta partnered with 50 non-governmental organizations around the world including BRAC to support the launch of StopNCII.org, a platform supporting efforts to stop non-consensual sharing of intimate images on the internet, which is one of the most notorious means of cyberbullying and harassment.
Asif Saleh, Executive Director of BRAC Bangladesh said, “Meta is a very important partner for us as the country tackles a growing number of cyber threats which is challenging social cohesion.”
Also read: Lightshore’s webinar aims to accelerate women's participation in IT Sector
He said they believe the training will give their communities the much needed tool to become more resilient and prepared in a world where the impact of digital life is increasingly crossing over to the real lives of the citizens across the society.
In 2021, Meta announced the launch of the Women's Safety Hub to centralize all the safety resources that women need when navigating its platforms.
It has been developed in consultation with safety partners around the world, including Bangladesh. It includes information for women leaders, journalists and survivors of abuse.
BRAC at 50 : What about the next 10?
Fifty years at the top is an achievement for any organization and BRAC has done that. Abed bhai came from a history that suited the first fifty years. But that history is rapidly ending and the challenge for the current BRAC leadership is to do a new “Abed”. As it celebrates the past, the future kicks at the door. The old BRAC is over with its “noblesse oblige” values to do good for others less advantageous.
In the post 1971 turmoil and turnover, NGOs were the last resort of the well-meaning and dependent middle class who got left out in the post-Independence class-power distribution. But NGOs are coming to an end. If BRAC is to survive, it needs to look at a future without borrowed wisdom from the West and explore and use the lesson from why despite so much denial, the rural poor have done so well.
Also read: UNDP to work with BRAC for accelerating pace of poverty reduction
Intermediaries in decline
BRAC is like all development organizations - an intermediary outfit. It carried resources of the better off world, mostly external to the rural poverty zones. It sustained the poor and as food related distress declined, graduation from ultra-poverty increased and general health and social conditions got better overall. But they were old battles and the BRAC after 50 faces a world in which people on their own tackled Covid even as the West predicted disaster while withholding vaccines for the rest of the world.
The “rights-based” idea spaces dominated by the NGO is largely replaced by the economic , more natural than elite constructed. Increasing strength of the BRAC client population means old services are not as required as before.
Micro-credit as an internal co-funder of its operations, is very important but the donor world is battered beyond belief. In the last 2 years, our most shocking discussion was with a donor who said, “GOB doesn’t listen to us anymore as it has so much more money.” The mental shift has to be from “Bangladesh as poor” to “Bangladesh as potentially well off” . It’s the Liberal-Left that stigmatizes wealth making, those who are not in poverty themselves. This colonial hangover must go and as China has shown wealth making of the majority is a social change tool.
Also read: BRAC continues emergency services for Rohingyas, locals amid Covid-19 pandemic: BRAC Global ED
Into the future with dirty hands and all
BRAC didn’t want to enter the migration sector as a player because Abed bhai didn’t want people crowding the office and parades of unhappy clients. He didn’t then but when he did try it didn’t work. That was a lost opportunity in 2005. It’s the migration money that has become the most powerful agents of change in the rural areas. Rural intermediation has also grown but it is located in economics and exclusive to them as experiences of the Ultra-poverty alleviation shows.
Banking is weak because most loans go through connections in the formal sector. He thought that Bkash would make banking easier and it has. The rise of digital money also shows that. Clearly, he was thinking on the edge of the last historical phase but the focus on economics was imagined as support of the poor and micro entrepreneurs. That has changed as SME enterprise and rural bonds and savings markets are bigger than ever. Agriculture and Aarong are small time sectors. Its economic enhancement projects need to go to scale. BRAC needs to reimagine the future as Abed bhai did 50 years back.
Increasingly, the people show they are able to organize their life better than the GOB does and as donors prescribe. Hanging on to SDGs should not be BRAC’s priority but high intensity economic expansion of people should be. A much strengthened rural population doesn't need NGOs as much as they did till the 2000s. BRAC needs to get a makeover.
Hopefully, it's goodbye to the old BRAC and welcome to the new BRAC. Congrats.
UNDP to work with BRAC for accelerating pace of poverty reduction
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and BRAC have partnered and signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to enhance the effectiveness of poverty eradication and make these efforts more impactful to ensure inclusive growth for Bangladesh.Sudipto Mukerjee, Resident Representative, UNDP Bangladesh, and Asif Saleh, Executive Director, BRAC, signed the MoU on Sunday on behalf of their respective organizations at UNDP office in the city.Under this partnership, both organizations will work together to enhance the effectiveness of the poverty eradication effort for fostering inclusive growth in Bangladesh.Evidence-based policies and programmes will be designed, and a platform will be created to further strengthen the social protection systems in Bangladesh to make sure no one is left behind, according to UNDP.
Also read: UNDP, BWJA seal deal to address, redress violence against women Signing the ceremony, Sudipto Mukerjee said the partnership will assist the government of Bangladesh to effectively identify and transfer social protection benefits to people living in extreme poverty."It will also pilot and develop holistic livelihood programmes collaboratively with different ministries of Bangladesh to ensure access to social safety net programmes and help the government in attaining the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030," he said. “A timely and much-required partnership to assist the Government of Bangladesh in bridging the gaps to achieve poverty eradication and sustainable livelihoods for people living in extreme poverty by 2030”, said Asif Saleh.
Also read: Norway, UNDP continue to work together for tolerant, inclusive BangladeshHe further emphasized that this partnership will help strengthen ongoing efforts and design new joint initiatives for social protection and resilience-building as we recover and try to build back better from COVID related shocks. BRAC and UNDP have a long history of successful partnerships at both the national and global levels in poverty eradication and human development and are committed to supporting the Bangladesh government in its effort to ensure inclusive growth.
BRAC continues emergency services for Rohingyas, locals amid Covid-19 pandemic: BRAC Global ED
On Tuesday, Global Jerome Oberreit, the Executive Director (ED) of BRAC called for continuing emergency services for Rohingyas and local communities amid Covid-19 by following health rules.
Jerome put emphasis on strengthening BRAC’s humanitarian assistance and necessary activities for the Rohingyas and the local community with the assistance of the government.
He came up with the remark while visiting Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar. He visited different activities of BRAC at camp-1 East, and camp-4 extension at Ukhiya upazila of Cox’s Bazar, said a Brac press release.
Read:Serajul Islam Chy, Afsan Chy, 4 others get BRAC Bank-Samakal Lit Award
He instructed all concerned to provide emergency services for Rohingyas people and the host community by following health rules amid Covid-19 pandemic.
Dr Md. Akramul Islam, Director of Humanitarian Crisis Management Programme (HCMP) of BRAC; Roberts Sila Muthini, Head of HCMP Programme, among others, were present on the occasion.
Jeromke, during his stay at Rohingya camp, talked to Rohingyas and host community people and was apprised of their problems.
Read Japan to financially support operations of WFP & IOM in Bangladesh
He witnessed primary health care centre, run by BRAC HCMP, water network facility of WASH sector at camp-1 east, mental health and psychosocial support of child protection sector, homestead gardening of agriculture sector, legal protection and community based protection of Protection sector and two-storied learning centre of education sector at camp-4 extension.
The BRAC Global ED said, BRAC has been providing emergency services such as water, food, health care services and rehabilitation for the Rohingyas and local community with the support of the Bangladesh government since the inception of the Rohingya crisis.
Read: BRAC Bank, BFDS ink MoU to ease banking services for freelancers
BRAC continues to provide such services despite the outbreak of Covid-19, he said, hoping that BRAC will also continue it in any crisis moment in the future.
Later, he exchanged views with delegations from the Inter-Sector Coordination Group (ISCG), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), at a hotel in Cox's Bazar.
During the meeting, he emphasized on mutual partnership of BRAC with agencies alongside the Government of Bangladesh.
Read Lack of policy support, absence of infrastructures major impediments in financial inclusion: economists
Three conversations with Abed bhai - II
I.
Abed bhai, as I called Fazle Hasan Abed, told me once that as a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain he campaigned for them in an election. The candidate lost but he remembered that they talked a lot but did little work. He had become an admirer of Paolo Friere and his “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” theme but in the end, all ideas dissolved into an understanding of power derived from his own experience of work that marked his transition from an ideologue to a visionary.
II.
To Abed bhai, people were poor because they had no power and they had no power because they were excluded from financial access and transactions. They could not participate in economic activities so micro credit to him was not really an extreme poverty exit programme but a banking access mechanism.
READ: Three conversations with Abed bhai - 1
He didn’t think that it was going to change society and its economics. It was simply a tool for the middle poor people to take advantage of and press forward. In the 80s and even 90s, he had little idea of how to help the extreme poor.
So microcredit was not for the very poor, as he told me in an interview on the topic. “You can’t give credit to a person who is not already in an income mode. How else can they repay from the next month? It was to prevent them from sliding back to poverty and to become better off.“
It was therefore a tool for inclusion and the platform to become powerful. And this is where the key to his understanding of power began. Economic inclusion was power.
III.
He was really not into the kind of ideological liberalism that is popular among social workers and NGOs, as well as shushils and academics.
“Conscientization” was another buzzword, very chalu with the same world but he was almost dismissive of them. “How will they deal with economic demand with words? There are wants and needs and unless one has access to economics, nothing works. Have any of these outfits been successful?”
Since they were not and now many are dead and gone, he knew what he was talking about.
One day, he saw me on his office floor and walked towards me smiling. “What do you think about digital payment and financial transactions without going to a bank?“
I had no idea then but he was talking about bKash. He was more excited about it than I had seen him in a long time. “Why should people have to go to the banks and seek services? The poor are afraid of the banks as these banks are so rude. This will mean they won’t need banks.“
READ: Savage Truth Behind Mumbai Carnage
Today bKash has changed Bangladesh.
Essentially it was an inclusion tool and he was a person who saw in financial inclusion the route to freedom. And that meant power to seek and to preserve the achievement. He had very little confidence in slogan mongering empowerment type of work. He wanted the concrete power that economic resources gave to the denied and that’s how he saw BRAC.
Brac to empower women at the grassroots
Development organisation Brac will undertake programmes to help oppressed and deprived women raise their voices through creating more awareness at the grassroots level, speakers said this at an event in Cox's Bazar Monday.
To formulate a plan of action and recommendation, five partner NGOs of Brac – Society for Health Extension and Development, Programme for Helpless and Lagged Societies, Alliance for Cooperation and Legal Aid Bangladesh, Jago Nari Unnayan Sangstha, and NONGOR – arranged the workshop "Annual Progress and Experience Sharing."
READ: BGMEA, Brac ink agreement to ensure health, well-being of RMG workers
Speaking as the chief guest, Md Nasim Ahmed, additional deputy commissioner of Cox's Bazar, said: "Focusing on the rights and dignity of deprived people is crucial while ensuring their development."
Md Abdul Matin Shardar, head of the host community programme under the humanitarian crisis management programme of Brac, called upon the NGOs to come up with innovative ideas to keep up with the changing times.
READ: BGMEA partners with Brac to prevent gender-based violence, harassment at factories
Didarul Alam Rashed, executive director of NONGOR, Tariqul Islam, executive director of Alliance for Cooperation and Legal Aid Bangladesh, Sheuli Sharma, executive director of Jago Nari Unnayan Sangstha, also spoke at the function.
Sustainable technologies: Brac, BGMEA to team up to support apparel factories
Brac has expressed interest in partnering with the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) to support the apparel factories in adopting sustainable technological solutions and with relevant knowledge.
A Brac delegation met BGMEA President Faruque Hassan Saturday. BGMEA Vice-President Shahidullah Azim also attended the meeting.
They discussed possible areas where the BGMEA and Brac could work together for the betterment of the readymade garments (RMG) industry.
Read: Apparel industry carrying 'Made in Bangladesh' mark across the world: BGMEA
BGMEA President Faruque Hassan said Bangladesh's RMG industry has made considerable strides towards environmental sustainability and has continued its efforts in the area.
He called upon Brac to support garment factories, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in embracing technological solutions for cleaner production.
Read: Apparel makers urged not to take export orders without justified rate
The Brac delegation included Barrister SK Jenefa K Jabbar, director of human rights and legal aid services, social compliance and safeguarding at Brac; Md Zillur Rahman, programme head of Brac water, sanitation and hygiene programme; Khadiza Ahmed, senior manager, Mahjabeen Ahmed, manager, knowledge management, innovation and fundraising; Patrick Mostyn, programmes partnerships manager for Asia, Brac UK, and Coral Flemming, program partnership officer, Brac UK.