The recent experience from the field-visit to Faridpur has sketched deep mark on my mind when I saw community people reaping the benefit of the initiatives at the very inception of a project because of comprehensiveness and farsightedness in the plan. It was a cluster village comprising 10 newly-constructed tin-shed houses on raised plinth with a sanitary latrine for each, four deep tube-wells, cattle and homestead garden under Sukur Sikdarer Dangi village in Faridpur Sadar Upazila (sub-district)

Farah Kabir, ActionAid Bangladesh’s Country Director Farah was speaking in a talk jointly organized by ActionAid and Expo 2015 in the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro on June 17. Participants discussed how to bring changes in the food production system in order to eradicate hunger and, in the process, promote women’s rights and protect the environment mitigating climate change impacts.

We have been doing development work in Bangladesh for the last 29 years and have achieved amazing feats. In last 10 years we carried out significant work in transforming national policies that affected millions of Bangladeshi citizens. Seven brief stories inside will portray how people themselves could struggle and change policies and why we need to be more closely engaged and work with them in transforming their lives… We believe this publication will inspire and show direction to others who are committed to the vision – “people challenging poverty and exclusion

Surely many people have heard the phrase ‘an eye for an eye’, but ‘a stare for a stare’? I do not think so. ‘The meaning of the principle, an eye for an eye, is that a person who has injured another person receives the same injury in compensation. The phrase… is a quotation from several passages of the Hebrew Bible.’ (ref. wikipedia) And according to yourdictionary.com, ‘Stare’ means a fixed gaze that is held for a lengthy amount of time’. So, does it demand to stare at the person who stares at you?

I play with FACTS, WORDS and IMAGES believing that ‘INFORMATION’ = ‘POWER’ and it’s my RIGHT. Happy International Women’s Day from far and away! Every time I met a person, she or he greeted me with utmost enthusiasm. It was a great experience for me to capture them and their greetings in whatever instrument I had with me at that time. Lucky me, that I caught those moments in my camcorder! These memories are precious to me. I will reminisce about these days when I am old. I have learned, during such travels and hangouts in the rural communities, that life is simple and it’s beautiful. A girl of standard IX taught me that I can live with a dream even knowing it doesn’t have a mere chance to be fulfilled… but the key is to have a gleaming eyes. I am sure that dream has kept her soul spirited! In rural, people have time and zeal to stop by for you and say ‘Hello’. The communities are different from you and us, and so is the language. But these were no barriers to welcome me in the group or to have a long and sweet conversation between us.

25 year-old Hashi Akhter tells us. She is a young professional working as a child space facilitator for more than two years in a local NGO -Bhumija Foundation. Bhumija, based in Tala of Satkhira, which falls under the Southwestern coastal region of Bangladesh, is one of the Local Rights Programme (LRP) partners of ActionAid Bangladesh (AAB). Last year in August I was in Tala where I met Hashi for the first time. As a member of Emergency – Fast Action Support Team (E-FAST) of AAB, I went there to get updates from our Bhumija Foundation colleagues about the recent flood situation and relief distribution process taken by AAB for the affected communities. Within a short period of time I became close to Hashi while she was saying,

On IWD in 2012, girls from Bangladesh’s rural areas state their vision! “What do you want to be?” could be the second common question you have answered at several points in life. I remember scratching my scalp last time my grandfather held me in his arms and asked me the same question. He is no more.

In Bangladesh the “Vision of Girls”-project is one of the ways Action Aid fights to create better futures for young girls. As a member of Activista I have had the honor to meet Salma who used to live in the street. Former street child – future doctor

Narsingdi District Court, 15thJuly 2009 – two witnesses with different hearing needs were present in a case. The plaintiff hired an interpreter of Bangla Sign Language from Dhaka to interpret what these two witnesses had to say. At the beginning the lawyer of the accused party raised a question against the interpreter. But the honorable judge had a positive impression and the defendant’s lawyer had a strong point regarding the different needs of these witnesses. So the objection of the lawyer of the accused was overruled. A huge crowd outside the court observed this different kind of hearing for the first time in their life.

I was wondering what am I supposed to do now. Damn, never felt this awkward about a situation and my heart was pounding like I have been running so fast for long. But, surprisingly after a while, I felt that I am quite comfortable now. I think I should stop referring to my feelings, but for some reason I just can’t stop. Next thing I realised, I have started looking at others and I felt people were more embarrassed than me. They also did not know how to react because I assume, for the first time, they were in such kind of situation. I am sure, the way I have explained the situation, tons of negative and bad thoughts have already clouded your mind. Which is natural and this is the way the human mind actually works. Any wildest guess cannot be fitted in the situation that I have described but if anyone can guess then I would like to praise the person and for others, would request to be more considered about it.

Learning Document Series 9-10 consists of two development alternatives. The first one is Social Audit, an effective democratic approach to create scope for people’sparticipation in the domain of implementing programmes, projects, laws and policies of the Government. This document indicates outlining not only the process of social audit but also stressing on its importance and effectiveness in making accountable programme planning and implementation system at local level. The second one narrates Participatory Plans and Budget process that we piloted in some selected Union Parishads (Ups – local government units) in Bangladesh. This initiative aims at reflecting people’s expectations in the UP’s ‘Plans and Budget’ and triggering socio-economic development of the people in these unions by ensuring development and services including health, agriculture and communication through transparency and accountability.

I was a fresh graduate when in 2006 I joined the Bangladesh chapter of ActionAid. My first assignment was to execute a project named ‘Creating Role Models of Youths with Disabilities in Corporate Sector of Bangladesh’. The project was meant for capacitating potential young persons with disabilities as well as lobbying with the potential employers to facilitate decent employment for those youngsters.