Brac innovated women empowerment solutions across metavllages (15000 homes) serving 100000 people (in bangladesh of 1970s - one room homes would on average have 6-7 people. Village or rural in Bangladesh of 1970s meant without access to electricity. Bangladesh was 90% rural but with the pecularity of high population density.
5.1 Meta-Collaboration Platforms Fortunately Abed's greatest mistake got him into designing collab platforms for 100000 person livelihood meta-villages : micro-macro so to speak. To South Asia's smartest young engineer in 1972, at birth of Nation Bangladesh: it seemed initially natural to spend his life savings rebuilding homes (15000 villagers) flattened by war. Oxfam rated it best relief ptoject. But Abed was broken hearted- -tens of village mothers were dying of starvation weekly- his answer 1.1 microfranchising solutions, transforming aid if needs be
What seemed urgently obvious to abed became a transfomration in aid1.1 .He needed to urgently design microfranchsises however small but so village mothers gained positive cash flow while ending starvation eg rice prodiction , building last mile heath service (eg distributing basic meds). Histiorically culture had prevented vilage women from being productive agents - here was a chance to square a nationsd economy - manpower*womenpower.
For women to be massively, collaboratively and communally empowered to build a nation ending poverty the 5 most trusted and collaborative knowledgeable people they need access to are land engineer, educator, health worker, agricultural networker and banker
if you follow abed's 5 decades of empowering a billion rural asian women you will see how the 30 hunicorn jigsaw pieces (6 for the 5 primary sdgs) keep on being upgraded/gravitated around these value multipliers. We call microfranchise startups huniocors as these were too valuable fot abed the entrepreneur ever to want to exit - after all his putspoe was empowering women to end poverty across gebnerations not to cash out in any particular quarter. There is nothing more beuatiful sociallay and economically than a positive cashfkwo model as long as it trasnsaaparently intergars win-wons of all productive and demanding constituents. Adam Smith's ethical market design was being introduced through Abed on the Indian continent for the first time! No wonder Adam Smithians hail Abed as Glasgow's Universities most extraodtinary alumni sine smith and watt 1760s. If there is tio be a sustainability generation don't miss lieaning everything that can be found in the 30 collaborations 1 nillion Asian women empowered 2020-1970 - thank you Abed Bhai
the good news is this is a confirmation of the first 5 sdgs as intel and data everyone needs to trust building around
Bringing partners to a metavilage as development lad had many advantages. Most microfrancisses need a lot of concept development. The first generation of village mothers were mainly illiterate they needed action learning transfer of knowhow to operate the microfranchise as well as group support in becoming literate about savings and microloans.
Also Abed had his life changed back in 1970 when a million people around him were killed by a very local cyclone. He always sought to build resiliency into communities. In rural regions with no modern communications villagers needed to develop their own disaster prevention and relief methods. Cultural resilience (safety processes) 100000 people at a time had a better chance of coordination than say 25 vilages of 4000 people
goal 5 100% livesmatter communities (womne more productive at human development than men) 5.1-5.6; 4 livelihood edu for all 4.1-4.6 ref Safiqul Islam (abed nominated him as coordinator of school franchises -the largest non gov ed system in world) 3 last mile health services 3.1-3.6 last mile agriculture for local nutrition 2.1-2.6 banking for all whose entrepreneurship builds communities starting with poorest women
while building an undeveloped country please keep asking: is empowering this different from the western system of local government?; are those with knowhow behaving the way paulo freiere celebrates in pedagogy of the oppressed; we are talking about knowhow coming from living and learning with the people you empower - if for example a constraint common to everywhere abed's first 25 years of human development is no access to electricity grids (and so no telecommunication, no running water pipes) the knowhow has to be adapted to the local situation- by all means keep asking will there be an opportunity to leap to a better system - once villagers started to celebrate/hope from 1996 with microentrepreneurs of solar and mobile connectivity -what partnerships could take which sustainability goals to wholly new levels of valuing each others work and trust?
in his last few years abed attended a civil engineering summit in bangladesh - typically he always had a personal story of a mistake he almost made until he listened to villagers and that he asked alumni not to make
5.1 when first taking on the rebuilding of 15000 village homes that had been flattened by war he asked a western architect friend to map out a plan- the villagers reacted in horror to the ma with main streets etc; they wanted homes built on the pieces of land they loved and viewed as rurally beautiful; in this first metavillage this was a reasonable request; if you remember the shell engineer who had first been turned into a poverty alleviation networked by a million people dying all around him in 1970's cyclone- abed was always asking does thos whole community have resiliency against the particular forces of nature it is situated in- unlike abed's first metavillage work over the 50 years would get more challenging as abed knew full well that if climate temperatures rice by over 2 degrees the chances of all the peoples in this 8th most populated nation being washed away increase exponentially- its not something under bangladeshi control it depends on whether neighbors are empowered by the 5 most natural community builders all across the continent
some people in the west may question whether it was good or bad fortune that the greatest collaborative spirit of women empowerment across the continent became the natural interdependence of bangladesh and chinese women - after all the way british history drew the borders all of myanmar, india and west pakistan saw bangladesh as the opposition;
![[Flag of Bangladesh]](https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/images/b/bd.gif)
The background colour symbolizes the greenery of Bangladesh with its vitality and youthfulness while the red disc represents the rising sun and the sacrifice our people made to obtain our independence
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