VSO Bangladesh Strategy 201115

VSO Bangladesh Strategy

2011-15

VSO Bangladesh Strategy 201115

Contents
Foreword What we do How we do it VSO Bangladesh Who we work for Where we work Our focus Good governance Sustainable livelihood rights Inclusive health rights Cross-cutting theme: gender Cross-cutting theme: climate change Partnership: the way we work Implementation Our impact 3 3 4 4 5 5 6 6 6 7 7

Welcome to the VSO Bangladesh Strategy 201115. Based on development priorities outlined in the governments Bangladesh Vision 2021 and the national Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, our plan is the result of extensive participation and consultation with VSO Bangladesh staff, volunteers, partners, donors, community members and other key stakeholders. This document is an introductory summary of our detailed country strategy, providing an overview of our objectives, our programmatic focus, the way we work and our anticipated impact.

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VSO Bangladesh Strategy 201115

Foreword
VSO is an independent international development organisation that works through volunteers to fight poverty. We believe that change happens because people make it happen. Providing food, infrastructure and machinery is important, but we believe that people are the key to overcoming poverty. Thats why we work through volunteers. Drawn from many countries and all walks of life, they give their expertise, their time and their passion. Volunteers share their skills within carefully selected partner organisations: learning the assets, strengths and needs of their partners, collaboratively developing solutions, and supporting national volunteers to lead the changes. It is a powerful and sustainable way to create lasting results. Together we work to improve poor peoples access to quality essential services, information, technology and ideas that link them to local development and the wider world. VSOs approach builds on the strength of local volunteers to help impoverished and marginalised people understand their rights and fulfil their potential as active, equal and fullyvalued members of their society. match highly-skilled technical experts to each placements specific needs. Since 1974, more than 1,500 international VSO volunteers have given their time and expertise to our work in Bangladesh. Our programmes are supported by volunteers from Australia, Canada, China, Germany, India, Ireland, Kenya, the Netherlands, Philippines, Uganda and the UK. We also have a rapidly growing team of more than 2,000 national volunteers, who have been central to developing this strategy and who will lead its implementation.

How we do it
Bangladesh is thriving with development interventions but in many cases they lack sustainability. VSO Bangladesh seeks to increase the impact and longevity of these existing services and opportunities. We aim to strengthen communities access to them and increase service deliverer capacities to ensure equality. Capitalising on our ability to engage communities, our approach focuses on the unequal and unjust power relations that reinforce poverty and vulnerability. We do this by mobilising local Bangladeshi volunteers as members of citizen committees and of nationally-recognised youth clubs (inspired and energetic 1835 year olds), who represent poor and marginalised people in their communities and who can help to increase their access to practical resources, information and decision-makers. In turn, these committees and clubs are supported by international volunteers with specific technical skills, to maximise the potential for impoverished communities to lift themselves out of poverty.

What we do
VSO Bangladesh works to enhance the ability of marginalised women and men in some of Bangladeshs poorest districts to participate in, contribute to and benefit from our countrys economic and social development. We work with our partners to identify the skills that would most effect strategic change, and our international recruitment bases then

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VSO Bangladesh Strategy 201115

VSO Bangladesh
Bangladesh has achieved impressive progress in economic growth and social development. Over the past 30 years poverty has fallen consistently, with its Human Development Index rising by over 60%. Yet like many countries experiencing rapid development, this has been accompanied by a significant increase in inequality, with over 60 million people (40% of the population) still living below the poverty line. Some groups (and in some cases whole districts) have been excluded from social protection services or from the benefits of development. One of the most densely populated countries in the world, Bangladeshs rapid population growth is entrenching poverty among marginalised groups who are already unable to access basic services like quality education, health, water and sanitation or food security. All this comes in a context of a constant threat of natural and man-made disasters. VSO works in communities where the need is greatest, sharing skills and experience with local people and organisations who can use them to help address poverty. In implementing our previous two strategies, we worked to develop the organisational capacity of local non-governmental organisation (NGO) implementation partners through the placements of our international volunteers. We are now building on the success of this approach by working with these NGOs as our management partners. Our volunteers work directly with peoples organisations in a sustainable people-to-people approach, with the villagers themselves shaping and providing a focus for our work. Together, we seek to support disadvantaged groups in uniting as active citizens with the capacity, confidence and platforms to participate in development.

Where we work
VSO Bangladesh targets nine districts in three regions: Southwest, Northwest and Chittagong Hill Tracts. Within these regions we will implement demonstration projects in 64 model villages, responding to specific drivers of local poverty. We will then support our Youth Clubs and Citizen Committees to replicate the best practice across our targeted 44 unions and 19 upazillas (parish and local council levels of government).

Who we work for

VSO Bangladesh focuses on groups who are most excluded from the social and economic growth in Bangladesh and who are the least resilient to economic and environmental shocks. However, we do not consider these to be our beneficiaries. They are our implementing partners, supporting us to develop and implement initiatives that are locally-relevant, sustainable and cost effective, and which make significant and practical improvements to their circumstances. These include: extremely poor or marginalised women, including widows, female agricultural day labourers, landless women, abandoned women, impoverished mothers and women of reproductive age adolescents and youth, focusing on those in poor rural communities facing un/underemployment excluded groups, such as indigenous communities, Dalits, people living with HIV and AIDS and people with disabilities.

VSO Bangladesh Strategy 201115

Our focus
VSO Bangladesh works across different programme areas, which are fully integrated into our planning. We develop alliances with other organisations as well as government and communities in order to complement and add value to one anothers work, for a comprehensive approach to tackling poverty in Bangladesh. Our programme will reach at least 698,216 people directly. As the results are subsequently scaled up with our partners across the districts, the total reach will be at least 2.5 million impoverished and marginalised people. and replication of initiatives, targeting specific drivers of local poverty which can be tackled through improved local governance.

Sustainable livelihood rights

The majority of people in Bangladesh work in the informal sector, subject to low wages, poor working conditions, exploitation, and exclusion from markets. At present, 36 million Bangladeshis are chronically hungry: by 2050 the population will have grown by 100 million more people. To meet the growing need, food production and the labour market must double in a context of extreme vulnerability to climate change and declining fresh water resources; where marginalised farmers are poorly connected to marketing chains; and where supply of low-skilled workers significantly outstrips demand. In response, VSO Bangladesh will mobilise national volunteers through our citizen committees and youth clubs, supported by technical expertise from long-term, highly-skilled international volunteers. We will identify and replicate community-designed innovations, such as diversification of agriculture and more efficient water use, and take into account local skills, resources, practices and challenges. At the same time we will bring in relevant ideas and practice from international volunteers from both North and South contexts, to build capacity among local producers to improve and diversify their livelihood practices, and establish fair market linkages. In particular we will focus on alternative livelihoods to shrimp cultivation in the south-west, farming of ginger and turmeric in the Hill Tracts, and dairy production in the north-west. This will build on our pilot work in Bagherhat and Khagrachari (funded by the Scottish Government International Development Fund) and on our work in the north-west.

Good governance
Good progress has been made in democratic governance in Bangladesh, yet much remains to be done to translate this into real improvement in areas such as living standards and social inequality. Achieving comprehensive poverty reduction requires wide-ranging reform and revitalisation of the local government system. Institutional difficulties persist, including poor capacity of local government bodies to plan, finance and manage basic development activities in a responsive and accountable manner, compounded by over-centralisation of political power and financial resources. The national-level success of womens participation in government masks the minimal participation and lack of inclusion of women in local and community political processes. With support of our NGO partners and international volunteers, we will build strong and effective peoples organisations through our citizen committees and youth clubs. These will comprise of and represent disadvantaged members of our target communities. Citizen Committees will link closely to local governing bodies, such as the Union Parishads, to increase accountability, transparency in budgeting and decision making, and effectiveness in fulfilling their mandate of service delivery and community development. Youth clubs will focus on model villages to support the design, implementation

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VSO Bangladesh Strategy 201115

Inclusive health rights

Bangladesh has made promising progress in raising its overall health status and living standards. Critical primary health problems still persist, however, such as: widespread childhood malnutrition, one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world and extensive incidents of preventable diseases through a lack of access to and information about sanitation, hygiene, nutrition and sexual health. Compounding this, there are fewer than three doctors for every 10,000 people, while many community health facilities are under-utilised due to poor service quality and a lack of information about the types of services available. VSO Bangladesh will work to improve quality of and access to rural primary healthcare services. Through the expertise of our healthcare volunteers, we will build technical capacity among targeted groups of community health workers, especially in maternal health and community clinics. We will also build capacity among the youth clubs as peer educators in the areas of sexual and reproductive health, HIV and AIDS, nutrition, and hygiene and sanitation. Building on our strategy of maximising existing resources, we will support the activation of government health services, to increase local awareness of and access to the services available. We will also support our target communities to participate in healthcare decision making and delivery, and to effectively hold service providers accountable for the quality and inclusivity of the services they are mandated to deliver.

womens advancement is limited by entrenched social and cultural attitudes and customs that devalue, disempower and in some cases endanger them. Only 27% of births are supported by a skilled birth attendant; 36% of women actively justify being beaten by their husbands; and 59% of women are illiterate, leading to significant disadvantages in the formal economy and in access to helpful information about their rights and health. Addressing gender inequality runs throughout the core of our strategy. Gender is a cross-cutting theme in all our programmes to ensure the needs of women and girls are addressed in a way that engages men and increases womens potential to participate in development.

Cross-cutting theme: climate change

Highly prone to flooding and cyclones, Bangladesh is one of the worlds most vulnerable countries to climate change impacts. Impoverished people are the least resilient to the effects of changing weather patterns and other climate change impacts: in the south-west and north-west for example, rising sea levels, tidal surges and shifting seasonal patterns are depleting natural resources and livelihoods, leading to food insecurity and contributing to diseases in people, crops and livestock. We are integrating climate change considerations throughout all our operations and programmes. In particular, we will focus on community-based adaptation work as well as national advocacy. VSO Bangladesh is also conducting research into the impact of climate change on the lives of the people we work with. This information will help us identify the best way we can contribute to peoples ability to respond, adapt and develop resilience.

Cross-cutting theme: gender

Bangladesh has achieved notable progress in school enrolment for girls over the last decade, yet severe gender inequality persists in health rights and livelihoods. In rural communities,
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VSO Bangladesh Plan 201115 Papua New Guinea CountryStrategy 201115

Partnership: the way we work

We recognise that we are one small part of a process involving many diverse players. We therefore focus on the thematic and geographic areas where our model can most add value, and build strong partnerships with government, other development agencies, the private sector and civil society.

Implementation
At the heart of VSO Bangladeshs approach is a people-topeople model of development. Our development toolbox includes: Long-term overseas volunteers (professional placements of up to two years) Our volunteers come from both developed and developing nations, to share expertise, knowledge and experience not available locally. We are also implementing a new youth volunteering programme to support our work with the youth clubs. Short-term specialist assignments (six months and under) Highly-experienced professionals provide support at senior level. They include volunteers from the Bangladeshi diaspora and British MPs as parliamentarian volunteers. National volunteers VSO Bangladesh and our NGO partners harness the skills, local expertise and potential of people to lead and sustain their own development, by mobilising and supporting local people to use their skills and cultural understanding to make an impact in their own communities. Knowledge brokering Through workshops, conferences and national and international exchanges we connect individuals and organisations so that they can share knowledge, perspectives, ideas and practices. Advocacy We provide knowledge to those responsible for deciding on and implementing policy. We also provide opportunities for communities to influence those who set policies that affect their lives.

Our impact
Our vision is to significantly improve the lives of impoverished people through our work across our nine targeted districts. Effective citizen and youth organisations will be able to stimulate popular demand for accountable leadership and governance at local level and beyond. Poor and vulnerable people will become active citizens who are aware of their rights and have greater capacity and opportunity to contribute to local development solutions. We will build thriving communities in our target areas with increased productivity and diversity in agriculture. Vulnerable workers, especially women, will have greater capacity to establish sustainable, resilient and market-oriented livelihood solutions with fair working conditions. Community members will not only be more aware of their health rights, but will be better informed about proactive measures to stay healthy. Community health workers will have a greater ability to support local people and address basic health issues. VSO Bangladesh believes that by bringing people together we can fight poverty in Bangladesh.

VSO Bangladesh Strategy 201115

VSO Bangladesh 2/7 Block C, Lalmatia Dhaka 1207 GPO Box 406 Dhaka 1000 Bangladesh T +88 02 911 8541 F +88 02 811 3148 VSO International Carlton House, 27a Carlton Drive London SW15 2BS, UK +44 (0)20 8780 7500 www.vsointernational.org
Published June 2012