Freedom From Want: The Remarkable Success Story of BRAC, the Global Grassroots Organization That's Winning the Fight Against Poverty

admin — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:17:00 +0000

The truism tells us that if you give a woman a fish, she’ll eat for a day, but if you teach her to fish, she’ll eat for a lifetime. This philosophy undergirds the work of Building Resources Across Communities (BRAC), an international NGO located in Bangladesh. The group began in 1972 as the Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee, but quickly outgrew the moniker. When staff realized this, they abandoned the name and began to popularize what Canadian academic and NGO expert Ian Smillie calls “a motto: Building Resources Across Communities.”

By all accounts, BRAC’s achievements are stunning. First, the fiscal: In 1980, BRAC’s $780,000 annual budget was entirely donor-generated. A quarter century later, in 2006, the budget skyrocketed to $495 million with eighty percent raised through microfinance and other community-controlled enterprises. Chicken rearing, cattle breeding, fruit and vegetable farming, silkworm production, and craft workshops form the crux of their work. BRAC also sponsors health centers, financial institutions, and literacy programs, and has created a world-class university for people who might otherwise not have a shot at higher education. Their endeavors are continually expanding and have moved beyond Bangladesh’ borders into Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tanzania, Uganda, and the southern Sudan.

It’s an exciting story—or should be. Unfortunately, Smillie’s account is as dry as burnt bread. Part of the problem is stylistic. Too few BRAC staffers are interviewed and the voices of BRAC’s beneficiaries are also largely absent.

What’s more, Smillie dances around the most difficult issues, mentioning but never exploring them. He writes of Muslim fundamentalists who object to BRAC’s work with women, but Smillie never tells us how the group deals with such conflicts. Questions about a more general backlash also come to the fore. Since BRAC’s goal is to end poverty, not simply to dull its most dastardly edges, one can’t help but wonder about the reaction of large landowners and the business elite to BRAC’s anti-penury campaigns. Smillie’s account sidesteps politics and class conflicts altogether, making them so vague that they seem irrelevant. And the central conflict over power—who has it and how they can be forced to cede some of it to marginalized groups—gets nary a mention.

This leaves readers with more questions than answers. I was particularly interested in learning whether BRAC believes revolutionary shifts can be achieved through the types of nonviolent community organizing the group champions. Mention of left-wing theorists Paulo Freire and Karl Marx not withstanding, strategies for long-term change are, for the most, part missing from Freedom from Want.

Smillie presents BRAC as highly effective in helping select individuals lift themselves out of poverty. Even if this were completely accurate, the 2008 World Bank estimate of 1.4 billion people worldwide living on less than $1.25 day—including one quarter of those residing in the so-called developing world—suggests that there are limits to NGO activity. Without a global commitment to ending prevalent economic and social disparities—that is, massive social reorganization—NGOs can do little to change the world order.

In the end, the truth is clear: despite significant victories by BRAC and groups like it, the challenge of winning universal social justice requires more than one organization, no matter how stellar.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, June 2nd 2009

Latina Activists Across Borders: Women's Grassroots Organizing in Mexico and Texas

admin — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 14:10:00 +0000

By Milagros Pena

Duke University Press

Milagros Pena’s book, Latina Activists Across Borders, is a significant attempt at recording the oral histories of women responsible for developing and running NGOs (non governmental organizations) in Mexico and the border cities of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez. This particular kind of work is necessary to further understand how women organize as activists outside of more privileged academic, feminist settings.

As a feminist who chose to leave the academy, I am often baffled by how women comfortably practice their feminist values outside the sanctuary of women’s studies departments and women’s centers on college campuses. In many ways, practicing feminism outside of the ivory tower takes guts, particularly in those parts of the U.S. (and elsewhere) that insist men and women practice and participate in traditional gender roles. Pena’s book provides some insight on how women outside of the academy practice feminist values in what could be considered hyper-patriarchal locations.

The notion of taking “baby steps” has a very real impact in places where feminist ideas and beliefs are considered foreign, feared or maligned. I was impressed by one interviewee from Michoacan when she proclaimed what an achievement it was for women to meet (outside of the home) to discuss feminist-informed initiatives. Of course, there are places in the U.S., other than the border, where minute actions would also be considered quite significant—the small, southern town where I live, for example.

The importance of networking between NGOs, even those with a religious impetus, is vital for the survival of these grassroots efforts. It is important to note, that the organizers interviewed in Mexico saw a natural relationship between the goals of organizations with religious roots and those with more feminist ones. In other words, they were not mutually exclusive. Both types of organizations worked to help those in need. Yet, many of the women in Mexico were careful about labeling their efforts feminist since local reactions to preconceived, reduced views of what feminism entails (primarily, those who reduce it to “man hating,” and those with religious reasons for resisting feminism) are rather entrenched. Instead, these organizers have labeled their activism as part of a “woman’s movement” to help soften the edges of public misperceptions of feminism. While this magical renaming no doubt helps to get women in the door that need the services and programming these NGOs provide, it also has the potential to further entrench the idea that feminism is something to be feared, denigrated and resisted.

The book is worth reading for those who work in NGOs, study feminist theory or consider themselves feminists. The tone is academic, as is the language, but the excerpts from the transcripts are quite interesting and warmer in tone than the whole of the book. There are varied ways of practicing feminism and this book underscores those multiple practices as being necessary for surviving a patriarchal and capitalist reality.

Written by: Denise Menchaca, July 23rd 2007