Over the last 50 years the greatest human development miracle can be explored through village women empowerment networks across Asia - remember Asia id 65% of peoples and up to world war 2 the vast majority of the continent had been excluded from the firt 185 yeras of engineers because colo0nial empires focused on coastal trade and extracting from other peoples lands not so much development by and for all the peoples
Schumacher an alumn of keynes is known for 2 sayings - small is beautiful- ending poverty is largely a challenge of millions of volages
Across the humid asian continent in places with large populations with small amounts of land per head the main challenges and the main solutions were similar - oral rehydration could save up to a third of infants from dying but only id mainly illiterate village mothers knew how to apply it; local rice production eg borlaug is reputed to have prevented starvation of a billion people ; .. it is in this context we aim to summarise how women empowerments deepest economic development miracles depend on swapping context solutions bottom up .. we welcome corrections, questions chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk swapping notes over 50 years and impacting quarter of the world's poorest families development is not something that one can record on mobile screens unless there is very deep collaboration on what data maps we are talking about and deep love at the community level- this is of course why women empowerment networking is to some of us the most exciting news of the last half century and climate and tech critical dutrng the sdg decade 2020s
Dear Jennifer over 50 years this is roughly how rural women empowerment built bangladesh (in 1971 90% people living in villages ie without electricity grids or other infrastructure. Fazle Abed, Glasgow Graduate, who had become Shell Oils leading young Asian Engineer (ceo east pakistan by age 30) experienced 1970 cyclone that killed million people and 12 months later war of independence. He turned his biggest mistake into an advantage. Because he was an engineer after finishing his contract with shell he used his life saving about 15000 pounds and matching grant from oxfam to rebuild 15000 homes (which the war had flattened in north east corner of new bangladesh. It was a mistake because no sooner than the homes were complete (with oxfam saying this was most efficient project ever) he found 10 mother dying a week of starvation, 20 infants dying of diarrhea and starvation. So he started designing village microfranchises - food , health services. that village mothers could own making positive cashflow. Within brac's first 10 years (before yunus got a banking licence) abed was designing village business solutions to goals 1,2, 3- and goal 5 100% working adults with no underclasses and responsibility for safety of each other became a partnership search platform. By the second decade the village mothers demanded abed start designing schools. (Government still didnt have enough tax money to do more than develop city and run army at country's borders. Over time brac designed 14 agricultural value chains that it led nationally - initially food security markets ie rice and vitamin-rich veggies then poultry and dairy; in parallel so villagers could earn money from city it looked at cash crops, crafts including silk, more recently forestry. Each of goals 1 finance, goal 2 food, goal 3 health, goal 4 education, goal 5 partnership platforms for 100000 person fully productive communities. For example finance value chain is complete in bangladesh -it now has city bank for 2nd, 3rd generation villagers now in the city; cashless banking and remittances; as well as rural microcredit, and ultra poor graduation - 2 year program for those needing 2 years support before they can use microfinance. My understanding rice the crop that ended starvation - from 1960 was set up our of philippines 1960! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Rice_Research_Institute by eg us rokefeller foundation so that borlaug crop science (which has already advanced in japan taiwan korea south) could be replicated across rest of asia. By the time abed needed to study rice science, tropical villages in china had the most relevant seed extraction for bangladesh. So for decades the chinese and bangladeshis led rice sceince variants most relevant to local conditions. I believe brac people co-chaired irri some of the time. We are talking about up to 10 fond more village rice production between optimalisation to context and general production as of 1970. When it comes to building a regional economy from no resources other than mothers family building and miniscule land plots and from decade 3 all sorts of remittance flow, there is a lot of context , timing, relentless integration - for example Brac couldnt go into nationwide daury distribution until the eu had stopped dumping powdered milk.It turns out that of the people who worked with abed for decades, the one who has worked in the philippines started designing schools adapted to the philippines. Here is his note on what he did. Please say if you want me to connect him on whatsapp . His name is Safiqul Islam and Abed told my team to always check things with him. . .......................................................................................... Chris,
1. With Australian support BRAC Education Programme operated a pretty large number of primary schools and pre-schools in Muslim Mindanao, in Philippines for 7 years from 2011.
2. I visited these schools few times and Mr Abed once.
3.Philippine's education ministry recognised it as an alternative model of education.
4. Following Bangaldesh's Boat School concept, a few Boat Schools were constructed and operated for children of most underprivileged Bazao (fishermen) Community of Philippines.
5. You may remember BRAC's Boat School was showcased in WISE in 2012 . It was awarded by Finland as one of world's 100 innovation. It was primarily funded by the 'Education Above All' of Qatar. Mother queen Her Highness of Qatar visited Boat Schools in Bangladesh.
Boat School is well aligned with Climate Change.
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