The New Nation - Internet Edition

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.

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."

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."