I am leaving for Bangladesh today, in a matter of hours. I've been talking about this trip for so long, with my friends, colleagues, fellowship interview panels, and I'm pretty excited about the trip. The fellowships I received were for research for my senior honors thesis. I've been doing research on progress on Millennium Development Goals over the past few years. At UNC, I studied a lot of the framework of the MDGs through the UN and initiatives such as the Millennium Village Project. While I was at the Embassy of Bangladesh, I studied the Bangladesh Country Reports on MDG progress put out by the Government of Bangladesh.
Through the readings, conversations, and exposure I've had so far to the MDGs, I became very drawn to community-based approaches. Through the development approaches I studied, it seemed that the most successful ones were the ones that local people incorporated and furthered. That's why I was so drawn to the Millennium Village Project. Yet my interest was in human development in Bangladesh, as through our numerous visits back Bangladesh was always in the back of my mind.

My research led me to the NGO Unnayan Shamannay. In Bangla this phrase means "Integrated Development." I've met the Executive Director a few times, and he is the eminent, genuine, amazing economist (interesting how many economists there are in Bangladesh) named Dr. Atiur Rahman. He founded this NGO after extensive work with Bangladesh Institute for Development Studies and Dhaka University. After speaking with Dr. Rahman, I became interested in one of their projects on the Millennium Development Goals. In addition, I was very attracted by their mission: "The human context and with all its concomitant linkages that shape and define the human prospect is the central concern of Unnayan Shamannay.
The operational space of Unnayan Shamannay therefore is more than research; it internalizes development, public policy and heritage." The humility and awareness that this NGO seems to bring to development work is a lot of what I was looking for.

Unnayan Shamannay has been working in 5 different rural districts of Bangladesh. These districts were selected based on areas in which local residents and local government authorities were willing to participate. Their approach has been to catalyze the formation of local MDG committees to inspire activities to promote the MDGs. Based on their work in these villages over the past 5 years, Unnayan Shamannay has seen significant improvements in MDG indicators...increase in child literacy, drop in maternal mortality, drop in infant mortality. Based on these results, the NGO is interested in expanding their efforts to more villages in Bangladesh. My project will be focused on analyzing the successful components of their village model and making suggestions on where improvements can be made.

Right. I've arranged with the NGO to have a daily working space at their headquarters, and to arrange field visits to the rural districts. I've been talking with them over the past 6 months, and so I feel that we're relatively clear on the research. I'm sort of nervous out of my mind. Because I'm being rather presumptuous with this project. Sure, I've been studying for a few years and have some cursory knowledge of development. The people I've been working with have been doing this for years, and they have a much better idea of the environment than I do. As much as I've made a conscious effort to speak Bengali and know about Bangladesh, I am an American, and I have been educated in America. I'm expecting some initial resistance, I'm thinking that they might not take me seriously at first, and I'm expected to have to work at it, a lot.

I know I have a lot to learn. The development theories I've been studying I feel have given me a good institutional understanding of human development. But that's not the only part of this. I've seen, through traveling through Bangladesh, that life is not about process and indicators and UN reports. To understand human development I feel it necessary to understand how people live and what their needs are and see them as human beings rather than research subjects. Which is why I'm very intrigued by this NGO....while keeping grassroots development at its core, most of its partner projects are with the UN. I want to see what that looks like, I want to understand what that means.

I guess what makes all this more scary is that there isn't really a personal/professional divide for me on this. I care about this work because it means something. When I talk about poverty in Bangladesh it isn't a discussion of how the other half lives or how some distant Third World country is suffering (I've read recently that Bangladesh is no longer Third World btw :). It's how my relatives live, it's how my family lives, it's personal. I care about human development because I've seen the effects of poverty through every visit I had to Bangladesh since I was a child. Those images never left me. And although I have a lot to learn, and much to understand, I think I can help, and it's with that conviction that I approach this research project.
And it is personal. I spent a long time, a few years, convincing my parents that this is the kind of thing I wanted to do with my life. Interestingly enough, though they grew up in Bangladesh, lived through the liberation war, and fiercely love their homeland, they always said that I couldn't do anything there. They would talk about the lack of opportunity, the corruption, everything, and say that they didn't believe it was possible for positive change to happen. But I had the suspicion that they never really believed that. They treasured the security and stability of life in America, but Bangladesh is their homeland. And then there was Yunus, the amazing Nobel Price achievement that showed the world that improvement is being done, is being done well, and is being recognized internationally. I think Yunus served as the one biggest factor in legitimizing my work with my parents. When I actually got to meet him this year, their pride was readily apparent.

So that's my research plans. I don't expect to learn everything or understand everything in a month. But this isn't the last time I will be back. I see this as a first step, for many future visits for what I want to do.

While I am in Bangladesh I also plan to visit the Johns Hopkins Jivita research site. This is one of the largest studies done on child vitamin A deficiency, and since I've been interviewing at Hopkins they've mentioned connecting with this site quite a few times. The research directors are incredible, and they've mentioned the possibility of my working with them one summer. Johns Hopkins has an amazing institutional relationship of doing research in Bangladesh, and if I end up doing my master's there (fingers crossed!), I hope to be back many times in Bangladesh.
Through my work with Ashoka, I have also made plans to connect with Ashoka Fellows and the country director. I have been speaking a lot with Shamsul Momen Palash, a dynamic fellow in charge of the Green Bangla Coalition. I'm excited to see his work in Dhaka and speak with him more. 3 of the other fellows run NGOs that are conveniently located in the district in which I will be living, Dhanmondi. I hope to meet with a few of them after work some days. I aim to understand how their Ashoka experience has been, to see if they have suggestions for improvement, and see where Ashoka might be able to improve. My approach will be to listen and to stay humble.

In the midst of this I've scheduled appointments with people working in public health in the country and civil society. I have a good friend at the BRAC University School of Public Health who will show me around their school and government center. My contact at ICDDR,B, a renowned site for study of infectious disease, will show me around their site as well. I wanted to get a greater understanding of public health work in Bangladesh, so I am excited about these visits.

I also have meetings with people from the Center for Policy Dialogue, Bangladesh Environment Network, and Grameen. Okay, so I've made a lot of plans. :) Um, eek, and I know traffic is bad, it's hard to make appointments, plans fall through. But I'm looking forward and excited about this. I think that to be involved in systemic change, you have to understand things from different perspectives. I will be doing work with my NGO, but I wanted to get a view of things from other members of civil society, public health experts, Ashoka. I think their work in human development is all connected, and I want to understand how it interacts, interplays. My time is short, but I plan to listen and take up as much as I can. And I'll return, as soon as I can I think. :)

I think the best part of this so far is that it's personal. My entire family knows about it, my grandmother is traveling with me, my parents have been giving me advice and helping me practice Bangla, and last night Mom said she was really proud of me. :) This isn't a one-time thing for me, I have a lot of ties here, this matters to me, and although the work will be hard, that doesn't scare me. I believe in this and I will work for it. So I leave today! Eeek, we'll see how this goes, and I feel ready. To learn a lot, to be challenged, shaken up, forced to adjust. I have my fingers crossed, and a strong belief that this will work. It has to.