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[chris macrae]

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[chris macrae]

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SIR FAZLE ABED'S 2016 BLEDISLOE LECTURE AT RAU--FIGHT AGAINST POVERTY

by David Campbell

Sir Fazle Hasan Abed KCMG delivering the Bledisloe Lecture at RAU,  11 December 2015.

Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, the 2015 World Food Prize Laureate and founder of BRAC (formerly known as the Bangladesh Rural Development Advancement Committee), gave the Bleldisloe lecture on ‘Empowering the poor in the fight against hunger’  at RAU on 11 December.

Fazle Abed and I first met in 1976 in Dacca, Bangladesh. BRAC had been launched 1972 and I had just arrived with my family in the country as the OXFAM representative. BRAC was a key OXFAM partner andI worked closely with Fazle Abed and his wife, Ayesha,  throughout my four years in Bangladesh, an incredible and profound experience which has formed the foundation of my career in development.

Ayesha, who tragically died in 1982, had been the driving force behind Aarong, the fair trade initiative, set up under the umbrella of BRAC, to market ethically made handicrafts and dedicated to bring about positive changes in the lives of disadvantaged artisans and ultra-poor, under-privileged rural women.

In 1972 Bangladesh, previously East Pakistan, emerged from the War of Liberation as an independent country. Following on from a devastating cyclone it had been shattered by the war, 10 million Hindus fled to India and 30 million people were displaced. There was widespread desperate poverty and hunger. Further, the departure of the old Pakistan administration which had run East Pakistan as a colony, left a barely trained infrastructure behind them.

Fazle Abed is a deeply impressive man, quiet and diplomatic, carefully avoiding the fevered political environment of Bangladesh. He and his team plan programmes with meticulous care and I recall he would frequently work at his desk throughout the night.

He had been based in the UK working as an executive for Shell. He resigned his job, sold his London flat and returned to Bangladesh where he set up BRAC to tackle the underlying causes of poverty and hunger through literacy programmes, agricultural schemes, health care, family planning and credit support for landless farmers.

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From its birth amid the chaos and appalling poverty of the liberated country, BRAC is now the world’s largest NGO, employing 110,000 people in 11 different countries worldwide, including South Sudan, Uganda and Tanzania, and has lifted more than 150 million people out of poverty. It has also set up the BRAC University in Dhaka.

This is a tremendous achievement and BRAC is widely influential internationally, challenging traditional and heavy-handed and often futile approaches to development.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the work of the South American educator, Paulo Freire, had a profound effect on Fazle Abed and the development of BRAC, as it did on me. Freire argued that education should not consist basically of filling leaners up with knowledge like a piggy bank, but rather that the learner is a co-creator of knowledge. Hence, an extension agent works with farmers to find solutions by bringing together each others’ skills and experience. In other words, ‘bottom-up’ rather than ‘top-down’ development.

BRAC’s first projects were in the remote northern part of Bangladesh, well away from government interference. I vividly recall my first visit by boat and staying in a corrugated hut surrounded by water. Functional education, teaching people to read and count, was the basis of the programme, concentrating on life-skills development education for adults that helps to build solidarity, create a savings mentality and prepare people for new income generation.

I have learnt so much from BRAC and I hope that the African Fellowship Programme will be able to work with BRAC in Africa where our experience in agriculture could complement BRAC’s experience in social development.

David Campbell

 

 

[chris macrae]

3 May 2016, Dhaka

In celebration of BRAC’s founder and chairperson Sir Fazle Hasan Abed’s 80th birthday, messages have been flooding in from all across the world to wish him a happy birthday. Global leaders such as Gordon Brown, the former prime minister of the UK, Desmond Swayne, Minister of State for International Development (DFID), UK, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, Minister of International Development and the Pacific, Australia, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the President of Liberia, are among the few that have been extending their best wishes.

In a message, Bill Clinton, former president of the United States, says, ‘You’ve helped millions of people in Bangladesh and beyond to escape poverty through the dignity of their own work. In doing so, you’ve revolutionised the way we all think about development. Luckily for all of us, you show no signs of slowing down anytime soon.”

Bill Gates, co-chair and trustee of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said, ‘We’ve had a great partnership with BRAC for more than a decade, and it’s made a huge difference. Through BRAC, you have changed the course of history for millions globally. For your vision and commitment to creating a better world, we salute you.”

“Abed bhai, happy birthday,” said Jim Kim, President of the World Bank. Having met Sir Fazle more than a decade ago, he says, ‘The scale and impact of what he’s done, and yet the utter humility with which he’s done everything, I think is a lesson for every single one of us who are working in development. For Abed bhai, everything has always been about making sure that women are empowered; making sure that children have education, even through informal systems.’