Women Helping Women in Bangladesh
Banchte Shekha:
Women Helping Women in Bangladesh
by Jim Mullins and Alice Boatwright
It is dawn on a December morning in Bangladesh. The sun is rising in a luminous
red ball over fields of yellow mustard flowers. Chickens scratch and peck
under tall banana trees, their leaves heavy with dew. A dog barks at the
empty sky, and, in the distance, the plaintive call of Muslim prayer undulates
along the cool, moist breeze.
Outside the thatch and bamboo huts that dot the roadside, squatting women
fan breakfast fires. The rising smoke sways and mingles with clouds of fog
that hang over tiny ponds and paddies.
Along the road is a sign, Banchte Shekha: Development Program for Women
and Children. A red arrow points across a small pond to a compound of bamboo
buildings where a group of women is gathering for breakfast. Banchte Shekha
founder Angela Gomes-a tall, vibrant women in her early forties-laughs and
chats with the women as she helps serve a meal of porridge, chapatis, and
papaya.
Many of these women have spent the night at Banchte Shekha-a safe haven
for them from an abusive husband or in-laws. For others, Banchte Shekha-which
is Bangla for "learning to live"-is part of a longer journey,
a first step toward self-sufficiency and dignity. For all of them, Banchte
Shekha offers hope, because one woman believed that poor village women could
have better lives, even when they didn't believe it themselves.
In the small village in Bangladesh where Angela Gomes grew up, women worked
hard all day, but, she says, "they were treated like house servants-underfed,
beaten, and mentally tortured. No one respected them, not even themselves.
They had no solutions to their problems. Life just went on."
Like the other girls from her village, Gomes was expected to marry at fourteen
and settle down. But she resisted that idea and won a scholarship to a mission
school run by the Sisters of Charity in Jessore.
At the Sacred Heart School, Gomes progressed from student to teacher while
still in her teens. She began to work with the nuns and Father Ceci, a Xaverian
priest whose program for poor people in the slums of Jessore impressed Gomes
greatly.
"Through the sisters and Father Ceci, I became very interested in finding
out why women are so exploited and dominated," she recalls.
But unlike the nuns, who called the problems of poor village women 'God-given',
Gomes believed that these women could learn to help themselves.
"I wanted to find a solution for them, to work on the 'woman problem',
but everyone-Father Ceci, the sisters, my family-thought I should go back
to my own village and get married."
Angela Gomes is an extraordinary mixture of warmth, good humor, strength,
and determination. No is never a final answer for her. It took all of her
persuasive powers, but within a year she was pursuing her own ideal.
"In 1977, I finally began to work in the villages," she says.
"The women didn't trust me at first because I was a Christian. They
thought I wanted to convert them. Some women thought it was bad luck to
look at my face because I had no children. I would try to talk to them about
their problems and they would say 'Where is the problem?' They had all kinds
of problems, but only I was aware of them."
Gomes went from village to village, alone and on foot. In each village she
was able to find someone to take her in, and, while she was there, she lived,
ate, and worked side by side with the women.
"They were my university," she says. "Every woman. Every
life. I have learned everything I know from them."
She tried to communicate her vision of a different life for village women:
a vision in which they were respected for their contributions, not victims
of violence and domination; where they could earn their own living and take
care of themselves and their children.
When she had gained their confidence, she talked to the women about the
struggle between rich and poor-that the poor always lose-and about the particular
problems they faced as women.
The way she approached them, Gomes explains, was to "start with what
the women wanted, what they needed. They could not eat education. They needed
food and work. Once they were sure they would have food-through having work
and income-they began to understand how the question of getting more food
is dependent on the question of getting more education. Then they became
hungry not only for food but also for education."
Gradually a small cadre of women-usually destitute women who had been widowed,
divorced, or deserted-became inspired by her ideas and joined her in her
work.
For Rokeya Sattar and other early members, the experience was life-changing.
"Before we met Angela, we didn't even know we were human beings,"
says Sattar. "We thought we were like cattle and deserved to be tied
in the jungle with the cows."
The first women who joined Banchte Shekha started changing their lives the
same way it is done today-by pooling their talent and resources and saving
money. Ten paisa, twenty paisa, one taka, ten taka. Enough to buy one chicken,
two chickens, ten chickens. When their chickens kept dying, Gomes found
a way for two of the women to attend a training program in poultry-raising.
Then their project began to bring in a little money, and more women were
attracted to the group.
Other income-generating projects began on a trial-and-error basis too-growing
silkworms and raising fish, making nakshi kantha (traditional embroidered
quilts) and jute crafts, keeping bees, fattening cows and goats.
Their projects weren't successful all of the time, but the women's progress
was steady. As one woman learned a new skill, she would pass it on to other
women. Soon there would be a whole group in a village earning and saving
money. The women of a neighboring village would hear about it and want to
participate too.
But the women of Banchte Shekha weren't always well received.
"There were people who did not want us because they did not want to
see the women improve themselves," Gomes explains. "If women could
create their own jobs, they would not need to be servants in wealthy people's
homes. If they knew their rights, they couldn't be tricked or beaten. If
they had money, they wouldn't need to go to the moneylenders."
"We had rocks and human excrement thrown at us," says Gomes. "They
said that I was a characterless woman because I was not married. They called
us prostitutes and claimed we were trying to destroy Muslim family life."
At one point a sixteen-page indictment was drawn up against Gomes, accusing
her of being a bad influence on the community. She fought the charges successfully,
but decided to take the magistrate's advice-he told her that she would be
less vulnerable to such attacks if she had "a foundation under her
feet."
In 1981, Gomes created that foundation by registering as a nongovernmental
organization called Banchte Shekha. "The aim of Banchte Shekha,"
she says, "is not to rescue women, but to help them learn to live."
Poor women around Jessore were eager to do just that. By 1985, Banchte Shekha
had attracted 5,000 members. That figure more than doubled by 1990, and
today there are more than 20,000 members in about 700 village-based groups
around Jessore.
In traditional Muslim families, a woman does not leave her home without
the permission of her husband or mother-in-law. Unless it's absolutely necessary
for survival, she does not work outside the home. She does not even go to
the marketplace to shop. The marketplace is the province of men, and Muslim
women are taught to avoid contact with men outside their families. So the
activities of the Banchte Shekha members are changing generations of training
and custom.
Banchte Shekha works with women in groups because the group provides support
for women undertaking these changes and because, Gomes says, "the problems
of the poor are so big they can't be handled either at the individual or
family level."
Village groups are formed with the help of organizers-experienced Banchte
Shekha members who go to villages where the women have expressed interest
in the program.
"We have a good reputation now, so people want us to come," explains
Gomes. "Women hear that relatives in another village are making money,
and they want to do it too."
Once a group is formed, its members elect a leader and a treasurer who deposits
their savings in a joint account. Individual members may only be able to
save about two taka (one cent) a week, yet the members of Banchte Shekha
have saved a total of more than thirty million taka in this way. Members
can take loans from the group savings for emergency, personal, or business
reasons. The group approves the loans, which are given at no interest and
with no set payback schedule. Nevertheless the default rate is only one
percent.
The groups meet weekly to talk, work together, participate in training sessions,
and make decisions about what they will do with savings or any money generated
by their agricultural, craft, and small trade projects. The income from
these projects is not large, but in a country where the per capita income
is $220 a year, it is significant. A 1988 study by sociologist Monawar Sultana
found that members were earning up to 700 taka (approx. $15) a month, and
that, in some families, these earnings represented fifty percent of the
total family income. Where the women are the sole wage earners, these earnings
may be all the family has to survive on.
Banchte Shekha offers members a practical, basic education that focuses
first on empowerment and income-generating skills, then on legal literacy,
health issues, and family planning. In Gomes' pragmatic idealism, a woman
who can create her own job and feed herself and her family is an educated
woman. She is disdainful of people who emerge from higher education with
no job and no idea of how to take care of themselves. She also has no use
for education programs aimed at the poor that do not provide the knowledge
and skills that they need to survive.
Dissatisfied with the teaching materials that were available for adults,
Gomes has created her own: songs, plays, posters, and books that convey
Banchte Shekha's message. Reading and writing are important, says Gomes,
but not as important as eating. Not as important as staying alive and understanding
that you are not powerless.
The road to the village of Chadpur is a rutted dirt track
that divides row upon row of bright green rice paddies. It ends in a grove
of banana trees about fifty yards from the scattering of bamboo and thatch
houses.
The most prominent building in the village is a sturdy bamboo pavillion.
It was built by Chadpur's Banchte Shekha group and sits on land that the
women purchased with pooled savings from their cottage industries.
About forty Banchte Shekha members are gathered in the pavillion to welcome
Angela Gomes and some visitors from the United States. Their talk is lively
as they settle on the floor with their embroidery.
The arrival of the strangers attracts a curious crowd of villagers: women
with bright saris pulled protectively around their heads; a few men in lungis
who stand on the edge of the crowd; and the usual army of brown-eyed children
who gather close around, gaping and laughing.
Gomes introduces the visitors and talks to the women about their work. She
describes the accomplishments of the group-how they have worked together
to learn 'to survive their lives.' "Today," she says, "these
women know they have value."
In Chadpur the women's main projects are doing embroidery and casting concrete
latrines. Use of the latrines, Gomes explains, can prevent seventy-five
different diseases.
The group has decided to perform a play for the visitors. Several women
hang a sari across the back of the pavillion and, laughing, disappear behind
it. The women on the floor move to create an open space.
Suddenly the actors emerge, transformed into village characters by a few
twists of their saris and a bit of charcoal and powder. The crowd of villagers
pushes closer in anticipation.
"Ah-ee! Ah-ee!" The story begins with the shrieks and wails of
a young wife who is being beaten by her mother-in-law. She can never do
anything right. Her husband wants more dowry from her family, but her father
has already sold his land to get her a husband. He has nothing more. The
village moneylender tells the husband that, for a small fee, he could easily
find him another younger, wealthier wife. So the wife is thrown out. Abandoned.
The story is a familiar and ancient one, and everyone laughs at the women's
lively portrayals of the evil moneylender, the arrogant husband, the cruel
mother-in-law.
But in scene two, a new figure emerges. A paralegal from Banchte Shekha
explains to the wife that what her husband is doing is illegal. He cannot
ask for dowry or abandon her without support. She can take him to court.
Together they confront the husband's family with the threat of a lawsuit.
Suddenly, it is all a misunderstanding! They love the young wife very much!
Nothing could make them happier than to have her back! And so the wife and
husband are reunited.
The audience claps and cheers. The eyes of the young girls are especially
intent as they watch their mothers and sisters and aunts-women who once
seldom left their homes-bowing to the large crowd.
After the performance, the women quickly resettle themselves and turn to
the visitors. They have shared the story of their lives, now they want information
in return.
"What is it like for women in your country?" they ask. "Are
women tortured there too? Do women go to school? Do you have divorce? Can
you inherit?" They lean forward eagerly, awaiting the answers.
"Some things are better," says one of the visitors, "but
in many ways we have exactly the same problems. Women are still not treated
equally. Many are still beaten and abused."
The women nod knowingly as they discuss this news among themselves.
It is time to go. Angela Gomes asks the women to join her in a song she
has taught them. It is a song the visitors know too.
"We shall overcome, we shall overcome, we shall overcome someday. O,
deep in my heart, I do believe, that we shall overcome some day.
"Women shall be free, women shall be free, women shall be free someday.
O, deep in my heart, I do believe, that women shall be free someday."
As a grassroots organization by, for, and of poor women, Banchte Shekha
is unusual, if not unique. Development organizations in Bangladesh are usually
founded by the educated elite, and even those targeted at women are most
often run by men. Long-time friend and colleague Shahjahan Kabir attributes
Gomes' success with Banchte Shekha to fact that she is a village woman herself.
"She is one of them," he says. "She lives with them and she
speaks their language."
Banchte Shekha embodies Gomes' belief that respect and empowerment begin
at home. That means not just in the home, or in the village, but also within
the organization. The philosophy of the organization is embodied in the
autonomy of group members and groups, as well as by policies such as the
requirement that each staff person must do at least one hour of manual labor
every day.
Although the leadership of Banchte Shekha is no longer exclusively women,
the majority of field positions are still held by experienced women members,
and Gomes has made a point of bringing village women up into key positions.
Each of the major programs of Banchte Shekha has grown out of the felt needs
of the members. They usually began in an ad hoc fashion.
The legal assistance program, for example, has its origins in early confrontations
between members and other villagers, usually husbands. If a man beat his
wife, he might find himself surrounded by thirty or forty angry Banchte
Shekha women who would gather to publicly denounce him. Often they would
make him sign a paper saying that he would not harm his wife again. A man
who tried to desert or divorce his wife, or take a second wife, had to contend
with Banchte Shekha members who were supported not only by group strength,
but a knowledge of the law.
In 1987 Banchte Shekha decided to launch a village-based paralegal program,
and, with support from The Asia Foundation, this Legal Aid Cell has become
one of the most innovative paralegal programs in the country. It is also
the only one run entirely by women.
The volunteer paralegals are village women who receive training in Muslim
family law on dowry, the marriage system, legal divorce, and inheritance.
These paralegals provide information to members and other villagers about
their rights, and they participate in the shalish, the village form of mediation
in Bangladesh.
Until recently, women were not represented at a shalish, even when their
own future was at stake. Their male relatives were supposed to represent
them, and all the decisions were made by the village men. Banchte Shekha's
paralegal program has helped change that.
Three hundred and fifty women have been trained so far as paralegals. They
work under the direction of one of the earliest Banchte Shekha members,
Rokeya Sattar, herself a village woman who was married at thirteen and abandoned
at twenty-two with her four children.
The paralegals have proven to be very effective. By July 1991, they had
settled 2,119 disputes at the village level and effected 2,382 marriages
without dowry. Attorneys who have evaluated the program have been struck
by the poise and confidence of the women as they put their cases before
the shalish or hold their own in difficult negotiations.
The legal program has been further strengthened by Asia Foundation support
that gives the women the money and the clout to say that they will take
a case to court and litigate if mediation fails. In the first four years
of the program they have won 278 court cases.
The Mother and Child Health Project has its roots in the early days of Banchte
Shekha when Gomes would go to hospitals and plead with the nuns to give
her free medicine for village children.
Dr. James Ross, a former program officer with the Ford Foundation, says
that when Banchte Shekha approached them in 1987 about funding a primary
health care program, one of the things that really excited him about the
project was their intent to recruit the health care workers from their own
membership.
Initially Ford supported the training of nine women as paramedics. Today
the program includes not only paid paramedics, but also more than 100 volunteer
health workers-village women who teach members about nutrition, safe water
and sanitation, family planning, and prenatal and child care. With the support
of regional doctors and the paramedics, the health workers provide routine
medical services, such as the distribution of vitamin A.
Village midwives are also offered training as traditional birth attendants
(TBAs). According to Banchte Shekha program officer Anup Saha, "Before
the TBA training, village midwives followed traditional practices, such
as witholding food from the mother and the baby after the delivery. We teach
them how to manage a normal delivery and ensure breast feeding, and we provide
medical support and advice if they need it." Some 200 women have completed
the TBA training.
The Ford Foundation has also capitalized a revolving loan fund that helps
women get started with income-generating projects. A woman may request fingerling
grass carp, for example, and, after she raises and sells the fish, she repays
Banchte Shekha in taka.
Funds generated in this way have been used for a variety of projects, including
the purchase of the organization's compound and demonstration farm in Jessore.
The demonstration farm is an important center for training in environmentally
sound agricultural methods and income-generating activities. Produce from
the farm feeds the staff and as many as 120 women a day who come there for
training and refuge.
The manager of the farm is Manowara "Dolly" Begum. An illiterate
woman who was divorced when her family could not meet her husband's demands
for dowry, she came to Gomes and said she would do anything if she could
stay at the Banchte Shekha compound. Gomes trained her to help take care
of the cows, and she has now risen to a management position and runs the
livestock breeding and production program.
"She is an illiterate woman, but she is educated," says Gomes
emphatically. "She can take care of herself. The money she brings in
from the farm pays the salaries of the professional staff here."
Farm profits from crops such as fodder also fund scholarships for village
girls to attend secondary school and college.
Gomes is particularly proud of this next generation. "They are the
ones who will become our leaders," she says. "The mothers, they
can only go so far because of the disadvantages of their lives. But their
children can do anything now."
In the spring of 1994, Gomes realized another goal: the opening of Banchte
Shekha's own training center at the compound in Jessore. In a country where
a tin roof is a status symbol, this complex of two-story brick buildings
rising out of the red mud is a dramatic illustration of how far Banchte
Shekha has come.
Funded by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), the
new center will not only serve members, but will also provide a place where
representatives from government and other organizations can learn what has
made Banchte Shekha a success.
Operating a facility of this size-and the budget it requires-has necessitated
some changes. In the past year the staff has increased by twenty-five percent
to 261 people. Now, in addition to the group organizers, there are field
supervisors and area managers who oversee all the activities in a specific
geographic area. At the compound there are college-educated, English-speaking
accountants and lawyers and secretaries putting in their one-hour-a-day
of manual labor alongside trainees from the villages and the older staff.
Despite its rapid growth and the inevitable expansion of management-and
management problems-Banchte Shekha remains true to Gomes' original vision.
"What's important to me is that Banchte Shekha is a movement, more
than just a development project," says Nick Langton, the Asia Foundation's
representative in Bangladesh. "It existed before any funders came along,
and it would continue to exist-although on a smaller scale-without us. If
you go out and talk to women in these groups, you get a very definite sense
that they have been empowered, that they are women making decisions who
would not have been making decisions before."
NORAD's Reidar Kvam agrees. He sees Banchte Shekha as a successful working
model for other groups.
"This is an example of what woman leaders can achieve in this country,"
he says. "I think they have been able to demonstrate to a larger audience
that there are strong, capable woman leaders here, and that they are addressing
issues of concern with an impact even beyond their target organization."
Gomes hopes Banchte Shekha will continue to grow and that other organizations
will learn from their experience.
"We have never claimed that this is the only approach to development,"
she says. "Certainly there may be other ways. The problems of poor
women in Bangladesh have been centuries in the making. By comparision, eighteen
years is not a long time. But every day is a new day. We have to be creative
to cope with the changes it brings."
It is late evening. Dinner is over and the table has been cleared. In
the narrow, cramped room that serves as an office and dining room by day
and a sleeping place by night, a group of women linger in talk around the
long table. The single fluorescent lamp casts a bright shaft of light into
the darkness beyond the open door. Several women hover in the shadows outside,
waiting for the room to empty so they can come in and sleep.
Angela Gomes looks pensive. She holds a large papaya in her hand, slowly
outlining its curve with one finger. She speaks of personal health problems.
She has ten more years, she hopes, to lead Banchte Shekha. To see the next
generation take over.
And then what?
She looks up and smiles broadly. Her eyes sparkle in the light.
"Oh, when I go to heaven, God won't want me," she laughs. "In
heaven there is no work.
"I will say, 'God, what is there for me to do up here? There is no
work for me. All the people are happy.' So God will smile and send me back
here, because God knows that I have to have work to do."
For further information, please contact:
jmullins@mindspring.com
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