Reconstructing Yakawaland village
near Band-e-Amir

This is no small achievement in Afghanistan, where "there is a sort of pall, a paralysis, obfuscating the future," according to Peter Tomsen, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan in testimony to Congress last month. "Concrete project implementation is delayed and feeble."

"Real and full-fledged reconstruction has not been carried out," agrees Masudah Jalal, a female candidate for the Afghanistan presidency who is running against interim government leader Hamed Karzai, in comments made on Iranian radio last month. "Assistance for war-shattered Afghanistan has been insufficient so far and has not been able to meet the expectations of the Afghan people."

Branching Out

As the war in Afghanistan was ending in late 2001, BRAC's senior management believed that BRAC had reached a point where it needed to be more pro-active in the assistance it offers to others. And they believed they had a responsibility to the Afghan people as citizens of the world, development practitioners, and members an organization committed to the eradication of poverty around the world.

They founded BRAC-Afghanistan in May 2002 to share the organization's knowledge and expertise with people who might benefit from it. BRAC was not in a position to contribute significant funding to Afghanistan, but it was poised to provide expertise, innovation and commitment that are just as essential to reconstruction and successful development.

BRAC started as a small relief organization in northern Bangladesh that helped poor people recover from the devastation caused by Bangladesh's independence war in 1971. However, its focus changed quickly from relief and rehabilitation to sustainable development and empowering poor residents of rural areas. For the past 30 years, BRAC has been promoting these two goals through its community-based organizations and micro-finance, health, education, training and research programs.

Today, BRAC is one of the world's largest indigenous development organizations and micro-finance lenders:

BRAC Facts BRAC has more than 26,000 regular staff and 34,000 part time teachers in Bangladesh. It works in 60,627 villages in all the 64 districts of Bangladesh. BRAC's community-based health program provides services to 30 million people across rural Bangladesh. It has graduated 3 million children from its 34,000 primary schools that promote non-formal primary education in Bangladesh. BRAC's total budget in 2002 was US$167 million, 82 percent of which was generated from its own revenue. In recent years, its credit program, which has provided loans to about 4 million women, has been so successful that it has generated enough revenue to cross-subsidize BRAC's other social programs. BRAC has achieved this success by working with some of the world's poorest people with an average daily income of US $ 0.70.

BRAC does not pursue any rigid development model, but adjusts its strategy to prevailing circumstances. It has been characterized as a learning institution that gains knowledge from its experience by following a responsive and inductive process.

Seeing the Poor as Resourceful and Capable

There certainly are many differences between Afghanistan and Bangladesh, in terms of history, geography, demography, and the economics of the regions. But the two countries share a commitment to overcoming poverty and the strong will of the people in both countries to make a success of their independence.

Citizen organizations such as BRAC have been dealing with the harsh realities of poverty on a daily basis, and from the same vantage point as the Afghans – limited resources, responding to local socio-political issues, being accountable to local communities, working with donor institutions and most important, trying to have a positive impact on the lives of the poor. With such common understanding and experience there is fertile ground for exploring different forms of partnership and learning between Bangladeshi citizen groups, Afghan citizen groups, and the Afghan government.

While the international community has often depicted both Bangladesh and Afghanistan as desperate situations, almost basket cases, the people in both countries have shown amazing resilience in the face of adversity and a determination to improve their lives. It is this fierce spirit of independence and enterprise that BRAC has learned to put to use in helping poor people find ways out of their poverty.

BRAC's core belief is that its target group – poor and disadvantaged women and men, whether in Bangladesh or in Afghanistan – are essentially resourceful and capable individuals who can turn their lives around given adequate access to resources (social, economic and political) and a pro-poor macro-environment. This belief guides its program design and drives its work

Today BRAC-Afghanistan has 158 staff members, 87 percent of whom are Afghans, working out of 17 offices in four provinces and Kabul. They operate 10 health centers, 24 schools in Jabal-e-Seraj and Mazar-e-Sherif, and a training center that offers courses in citizen organization management, gender, and development management. BRAC's microfinance program has established organizations in 378 rural villages with 9,947 members, all women whose average loan amount is $80.

In Kabul, BRAC's Micro Enterprise Lending and Assistance program makes loans to men. Altogether, BRAC-Afghanistan's loans total US$471,381 and the repayment rate thus far is 100 percent.

Defusing Tensions

Nobody working in Afghanistan can fail to pick up on the underlying tension and divisions between members of the large UN contingent that lead "UN lifestyles," especially in Kabul, and the rest of the population. A common refrain among Afghan government officials, political leaders, and even the general populace is "We see the big cars, the big offices and houses, but why we don't we see any of the benefits of this aid?"

On the other hand, BRAC-Afghanistan is a low-key affair – it has no big cars or flashy office buildings, and its staff spends more time in remote rural locations than attending meetings in Kabul. By talking about community-based approaches and partnerships with the poor instead of enticing Afghans with promises of millions of dollars, BRAC has avoided building castles or promising a panacea for Afghanistan's enormous problems.

Rather, it started working with people on a small scale almost immediately after it registered as a citizens' organization there. This "hands on" approach successfully diffused tensions and distrust that have plagued many other foreign development organizations.

BRAC is action and results-oriented, determined to gain credibility with rural communities. The relationship between BRAC and the Afghan communities it works with lacks many of the political dimensions and complications that occur with UN agencies.

Nevertheless, the poverty in Afghanistan is daunting. While viewers worldwide have seen endless pictures of misery and suffering in Afghanistan on television, it is impossible to grasp the full extent of the devastation and poverty unless it has been witnessed on location.

Children collecting waste at a dumpsite in Herat

Afghanistan's education system is in a state of virtual collapse. The current adult literacy rate is less than 25 percent for males, and less than 10 percent for females.

Only 5 percent of rural households have access to safe water. Most provinces have no public services such as policing, law courts, or any working local government. Most of the country's infrastructure has been destroyed.

The basic supports needed to make a livelihood in this predominantly agricultural economy, such as credit, agricultural inputs, land, irrigation facilities, and communications technology, are unavailable. The government does not have the institutions, the know-how, or the money to provide these things.

Further, there is a general, deep mistrust of offers of help because it is widely believed that most countries and institutions that are offering to help are pursuing their own agendas and interests in Afghanistan. Fortunately, Bangladeshis are seen as friends because they have no strategic interest in Afghanistan. Bangladesh is just another poor, Muslim country, so there is a feeling of commonality, not distrust.

Unique Assets

BRAC is uniquely equipped to provide the type of help and expertise that the Afghan interim government needs as it struggles to provide even the most basic necessities to its population, living now without fully functioning institutions, technical capacity, or budgets:

1. It has successfully ensured provision of basic services for the most poor, often the most difficult group to reach in any society. This has been achieved in Bangladesh in a context similar to Afghanistan, where normal government mechanisms for public services provision have broken down or are nonexistent.

2. BRAC has proven expertise in delivering good quality services in the fields of education, healthcare, micro-finance and micro-enterprise development to some of the poorest people in the world, at a cost and in a manner that is comfortable for them. It provides all its services through a community-driven and community-based approach that empowers poor people to address their own problems, as well as ensuring that programs are cost-effective – since many inputs are provided by the community itself, or programs (such as micro-finance) become self-financing very quickly. These are the first steps that also are needed in Afghanistan, first, to ensure survival of the poorest and, second, to build capacity for change and development.

3. BRAC, unlike most citizen groups, has proven experience working on a very large-scale. Its programs have been successfully scaled-up to reach millions – its current health program in Bangladesh has a wider coverage (30 million people) than the entire population of Afghanistan. The fact that BRAC has the capacity to work on a national scale has been recognized by the Afghan Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development, which has asked BRAC to be the lead organization in developing the national infrastructure required to provide micro-finance services to poor rural households.

4. BRAC is already accustomed to dealing with sensitive social and cultural issues in a Muslim context. Through years of experience, it has found a balance between challenging existing discriminatory practices in society without appearing to be threatening and insensitive to local norms.

BRAC has shown a unique ability to put poor Afghans at the core of its programs and strategies by employing original and effective methods for getting communities involved in providing and using basic services such as healthcare or schooling. It has already set up schools where women teachers are recruited from the local community.

New Roles for Women

BRAC has set up mobile health clinics that are partly managed and operated by women health volunteers from the community. The significance of this in a country that is just emerging from Taliban rule should not be underestimated – not only are women getting better access to services, but this is mounting a serious challenge to accepted gender roles.

This permits poor women in remote communities to act as service providers as well as consumers – two roles that have not been available to many during the past 24 years. As a result, women are getting the opportunity to become "experts" in their community and are being equipped to take on leadership roles.

Further, BRAC's approach to poverty eradication enables communities to manage their own education and health services. Training community members to be teachers and paramedics reduces dependence on the government or UN agencies and increases community control over what is provided, and how.

These strategies address immediate needs for basic services but also gradually empower communities to manage and control these sectors in the long-term. And this is the very definition of sustainable development and empowerment of the poor.

In most of rural Afghanistan, there is no infrastructure to provide health services and there is a shortage of trained medical staff to run existing facilities. On average, there is just one medical doctor for every 50,000 people.

On top of this, there is no budget to support health services and a there is a dearth of medicine and equipment. Many rural areas are poorly connected to urban centers, and the dictates of purdah restrict women's mobility so severely that many women and their children never get access to medical facilities. As a result, the mortality rates for infants and children under five are 165 and 257 per thousand live births respectively, one of the highest rates in the world.

To give women access to medical care and health facilities, they must be easily and locally available. BRAC is addressing these severe limitations on health care with a community-based approach that selects and trains women from the community to be health volunteers that can provide some types of care by visiting individual households.

Each volunteer is responsible for 200 households and provides the following care:

• Health and nutrition care
• Pregnancy related care (pre- and post-natal care)
• Family planning services
• Immunization for women and children
• Tuberculosis control program
• Water and sanitation program
• Basic curative services

This program takes advantage of the high impact of preventive healthcare and the fact that this care can be provided by women with limited training. By visiting households, these volunteers ensure that families get basic information about subjects such as nutrition and the need for vaccines.

BRAC has found that having a peer come to the house makes women feel more comfortable about discussing personal health problems. They are more willing to accept advice from peers, and if they learn that their neighbor has taken up family planning, they are more likely to accept it.

The health care volunteers are trained to refer more serious health problems to health workers with more technical training, and these paramedics in turn knows when to refer cases to clinics. This system has worked efficiently in Bangladesh, where it covers some 30 million people at the minimal cost of about US$0.20 per person.

Education: a Building Block for Reconstruction

Under the Taliban, girls in Afghanistan were not allowed to attend school. Since 2002, many families want to educate their children, but they have no access to schools.

Afghanistan's educational infrastructure has been badly damaged by years of conflict. There is a shortage of teachers and existing teachers cannot be paid. Schools now operating are often housed in a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) or UNICEF tent or under a tree and have few books, no furniture, and no drinking water for the students.

Bomb damage in Kabul

In this context, BRAC has set up 24 schools in the provinces of Parwan and Balkh to give primary education to young girls between the ages of 11 to 15. These schools are located in villages with the lowest school enrollment rates and in those without functioning schools.

BRAC works to involve parents in designing how these community schools ought to work and what they should teach. In this way, the education program has taken account of the fact that there are several ethnic communities in Afghanistan with different cultures and spoken languages. The curriculum also tries to reflect the reality of the students' lives and to focus on practical everyday skills.

A parent-teacher committee decides where a school will be located and its hours of operation. This ensures that children can attend school while continuing to help their family with household chores.

Teachers are recruited from women in the community. This is a positive development in Afghanistan for two reasons: first, following the long period during which girls were not permitted to attend school, parents feel happier sending them to a school where a woman teaches. Second, giving women public employment helps to break current taboos about a woman's right to work for wages in public spaces.

Because it is accustomed to working in a Muslim culture, BRAC has learned to design programs that challenge accepted discriminatory practices, such as gender roles, while at the same time being sensitive to what will work in the community – and how much it can afford to rock the boat without tipping it over. Big changes, such as women's emancipation, do not occur in one fell swoop. To nurture social change that is truly a people's movement, outside agencies can only suggest new ideas and encourage certain behaviors – pushing harder creates resistance and failure.

Rebuilding Livelihoods with Micro-Finance

The opportunities to make a living in rural Afghanistan are limited. The Afghan economy suffers from a severe shortage of cash.

As it has done in Bangladesh, BRAC is using micro-finance as a tool to empower women while providing a means for providing a livelihood for an entire family. BRAC has set up women's credit groups in several districts.

Thus far, it has disbursed more than US$20,000 in loans to 4,000 women in Parwan and Balkh provinces and in Kabul. The women who have formed local credit groups called village organizations have managed to accumulate savings worth US$3,500.

Running credit programs was difficult under the Taliban because nobody was willing to pay interest on loans – Koranic law forbids charging interest. However, BRAC has found that when it explains that the money charged in addition to loan capital is an administrative charge to cover the costs of providing a loan, and that is not used for profit, people have been willing to pay this charge. This is a major breakthrough for the development of the micro-finance sector in Afghanistan.

BRAC also had to seek men's consent in order to begin creating micro-finance groups for women. BRAC-Afghanistan staff from both Bangladesh and Afghanistan spent a long time in the communities discussing what they wanted to do with their programs and why. They explained how an entire family would benefit from a women's involvement in income-generating activities.

BRAC is offering different loans and training opportunities to men as part of a small enterprise program. Through December 2002, it has disbursed nearly US$40,000 to 71 entrepreneurs to launch various businesses including bakeries, grocery stores, drug stores, and stationery and cloth enterprises.

BRAC understands that the success of its programs depends on the full-fledged cooperation of the community. When community members fail to understand and accept the system of receiving and paying back loans, BRAC's micro-finance programs also fail. Thus, it is essential that participants in BRAC's programs have a sense of ownership of the programs. BRAC-Afghanistan's survival as a financially sustainable organization depends on developing and maintaining this sense of ownership.

Public Affairs & Communications
BRAC
75 Mohakhali
Dhaka 1212, Bangladesh.
Tel: PABX: (880-2) 9881265-72
Fax: (880-2) 8823542, 8823614
Email: public-affairs@brac.net