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The projects in rural area of Bangladesh aim to assist a mutual support
group called "Samity", which is organized by landless or marginal
farmers and their family. The word "Samity" means "group"
in Bengali, the official language of Bangladesh. For those who are the weakest
socially and economically, the most important thing is to help each other.
The purpose of Samity project is to improve their own lives by themselves.
One Samity consists of about twenty people, and group members are made up
of either males or females.
The basic rule of Samity is to have regular meetings and saving. By
discussing various matters in daily life and sharing ideas, the members
seek solutions together. Additionaly, each Samity member have to save
fixed amounts of money to the Samity fund every month. In Japanese currency,
the average amount is as small as twenty to fifty Yen per month, however,
it is hard to raise such money under strained family finances.
Though the pace is slow, increasing the fund stabilizes the lives of
the Samity. The members can borrow money from the fund in cases such as
when a family member loses a job or becomes sick. This fund is also used
for capital to start small projects for increasing income of Samity members.
As of March 2001, 750 Samity are active.
SHAPLA NEER supports Samity which proceeds their projects simultaneously,
in the following ways:
- Promotion and training of Samity
Professional staffs of Community Development Centre of SHAPLA NEER circulates
meetings of Samity to take care of each group's growth and give advice
to the members. Also, SHAPLA NEER provides training such as accounting
for operating the Samity projects efficiently.
- Adult Literacy Class
In Bangladesh, the illiteracy rate is 53 percent in male adults and
77 percent in female adults. In the rural area, the rate increases much
more. Illiteracy is a disadvantage in daily life as well as an obstacle
for developing Samity activities. The Samity members' lives have improved
since the formation of the groups 1 years ago. SHAPLA NEER opens literacy
classes to learn reading and writing, and simple calculation. The farmers
in low-income areas used to be uncertain of their lives due to lack
of education. Through the literacy classes, farmers have started improving
their lives. "Why are we poor?" "How can we increase
income?" The members put their gained knowledge and confidence
to Samity activities. SHAPLA NEER has held literacy classes since 1982
and almost thirty thousand people have graduated from the classes.
- Child Education
SHAPLA NEER provides supplementary lessons for children who are from
poor village families , such as children of the Samity members, so that
the children can continue their study at school. More than one thousand
children have this supplementary lessons every year.
- Health and Sanitation Program
People in farm village of Bangladesh are heavily in need of medical
and sanitary facilities. There is a danger that they could die from
a trivial sickness because of their lack of knowledge for health and
sanitation in addition to their ill-nourishment. The disease, from which
people in those villages suffer, can be avoided if they have basic knowledge
about health and sanitation.
Therefore, SHAPLA NEER brings up public health volunteers from women
Samity members and sets up a public health class in each Samity.
Also, to secure clean drinking water, SHAPLA NEER has set up a hundred
of Hand Tube Wells every year as well as tackling a problem of arsenic
contamination of underground water. SHAPLA NEER also makes efforts to
spread small-scale sanitary latrines to prevent a parasite and an infectious
disease.
- Income Generating Program
When Samity members save money to a good extent, they start small business
to increase their income. For example, they may buy calf or kid and
bring up those cattle to sell, alternatively they may borrow lands to
grow fruits and vegetables to sell in collaboration. They would get
the knack of business and learn how to work together effectively going
through trial and error on a small business scale. At the same time,
the fund would increase and as a result, they could start bigger business,
such as to buy automatic fire engine pump so that they could sell water
in dry season. Or, they could buy 'riksha' ( a car driven by human power)
to get more and more income. According to their fund and progress of
business, SHAPLA NEER provides small scale credit which could result
in their increased income. While, SHAPLA NEER also gives appropriate
advice and technical studies to make their business success. It depends
on this business that whether those poor farmers could really develop
their life through Samity work.
- Street Children
SHAPLA NEER launched an action toward the solution of urban problems
that had rapidly become serious since the beginning of 1990s. In particular,
with the cooperation of a local NGO "Aparajeyo Bangladesh"
in Dhaka, SHAPLA NEER is now supporting street children in the southern
part of the capital through "Street School" and "Drop
In Centre" projects.
SHAPLA NEER has local offices named Community Development Centre in 4
places in rural areas, adding to a head office in the capital Dhaka. As
of March 2001, there are twenty staffs in the Dhaka office who plan and
coordinate the general projects and around sixty staffs in the Community
Development Centre who visit Samity day and night to give people advice.
Bringing up Samity project had started from the assistance we gave to
a small regional group. After that, since the end of 1980s, SHAPLA NEER
had started the projects directly through the Community Development Centres
established in the rural areas with the aim of more effective management.
However, it became possible to leave the activities to the regional people
once again, since the local staffs had generally began to acquire the
ability of administration and management of the activities. Thus in 1999,
one of the Community Development Centres had become independent as the
local NGO group "PARRI" (Poverty Alleviation through Participatory
Rural Initiatives) and began the activities by undertaking the bringing
up of Samity. SHAPLA NEER has been promoting the partnership with PARRI.
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