ShaplaNeer
 
   
Rural Development Project

Urban
Problems

Office & Staff
Partnership
with the local
NGOs
 
Projects in Bangladesh

Rural Development Project

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.

Urban Problems

  • 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.
Office and Staff
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.

Partnership with the local NGOs
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.