Programme Review and Future Strategy for Tribal Empowerment in North-West Bangladesh

Background:
RDRS Bangladesh (former field programme of Geneva based Lutheran World Federation/DWS localized in 1997) has been implementing various development projects promoting skills, awareness, capacities, confidence and technologies designed to raise the living standards of specially disadvantaged and rural poor in Northern Bangladesh since 1972. RDRS with support from Stromme Foundation (SF) has been implementing a tribal development and empowerment project since 2001 to develop and empower the excluded tribal communities in three northern districts of Bangladesh. In the northern Bangladesh the tribal communities suffer from social and political exclusions. The government is not sensitive to their differential needs and aspirations. Social isolation, lack of economic opportunities, exploitation as well as human rights violations are some of the basic reasons for widespread poverty and marginalisation in the tribal areas. The tribal empowerment project has completed its first phase of 5 years and both RDRS and SF are quite keen to review the strategic performance and achievements of the project in order to continue the journey in a more efficient and meaningful way.

Purpose/objective:
The overall objective of the review is to make critical analysis of the strategic performance and contributions of the project and thereby determine future priorities to be attended in order to provoke sustainable development of the disempowered tribal community. The review is also expected to help determine future strategies to be followed in line with emerging focuses so that the intervention can make bigger impact on the lives of the tribal families.

Methodology:
The methodology for the review included both empirical investigations and desk research. The key premise of the review is to adopt and employ participatory approaches and tools. Consultations with different stakeholders of the project including the direct project participants at various level through interview, focused group discussion, structured meetings/workshops etc have been organized to generate information, ideas and inferences, which have been used to draw conclusions on the effectiveness of the current project strategies and possible future strategies. The records, documents and database maintained at the organization and project level have been consulted, analyzed to assess the progress, efficiency and effectiveness of the project. Some general documents produced by other organizations have also been referred to get an understanding of development issues and challenges in tribal areas.

Key findings:
The emphasis of the tribal empowerment project has been significantly concentrated on two aspects i.e. micro finance and education especially for the children and adolescents. Under the micro finance programme 250 MF Groups including 8 men's groups have been formed with a membership base of 5208 till December 2006 and a sum of Tk. 29.115 millions have been disbursed as loan to 5007 members. Total savings of these groups was Tk. 4.620 millions. The members have largely accessed credit for purchase of livestock and they make an income out of sale of livestock after rearing it for 1-2 years. There is a distinct rise in income of the people especially from the rearing and sale of livestock. The families could purchase assets, repair their houses, released their agricultural land from the money-lender and resumed to farming of their own. A special MF programme has been designed for land redemption as land mortgaging is common among the tribal people, which is a major reason for poverty and marginalisation. 476 loans have been sanctioned till the end of 2006 to release around 200 acres of agricultural land. There is no flexible product/system to suit to the needs of tribal communities and they are treated at par with the mainstream communities. In absence of flexible systems some members of the micro finance group still go to the money lender for small and immediate loans. RDRS had organised several training programmes but there was inadequate follow up at the group level to ensure that the members set up enterprises and necessary handholding is done with them. Only in case of mat making production process has been followed up with the training.
Under the education programme 18 Children Education Centres have been set up targeting more than 600 children. Because of the initiatives of the teachers in CECs nearly 500 children could be enrolled in the government primary schools during the project period. RDRS has been running 16 satellites schools especially for pre-school education in 9 Upazilas - especially in the tribal areas. While these centres are running quite well there has not been any effort for strengthening the formal primary schools in the project area and also for sustainability of these centres beyond project period. RDRS has been running 10 education centres targeting around 200 adolescent girls. The adolescent education centres would run for one year and sustainability of the centre beyond that period has not been properly thought of.
RDRS has been trying to sensitise tribal communities on their cultural revival as it strongly believes that the traditions and customs in the tribal society are on the decline. The organisation has promoted 7 people theatre groups and 14 folk song groups among the tribal people. There is no clear-cut strategy for promotion/ preservation of tribal culture - language, literature, festivals and different cultural activities, art and artefacts, political and cultural organisations, which is fast declining. The project could not locate adequate resources and focus on institution building among the tribal communities. The efforts for leadership development among the tribal people were inadequate and sporadic. There were opportunities in the project environment which could not be exploited for empowerment of tribal communities.

Recommendations:
In the next 5 years RDRS has to adopt an integrated and multi-sectoral approach to develop and empower tribal communities in the North-West Bangladesh. It needs to emphasise on the following sectoral interventions.
1. Institution building among the tribal communities - formation of representative institution at the village, cluster, sub-district, district and regional level, and their capacity building for advocacy and action.
2. Networking and alliance building for advocacy for identity, recognition, rights and entitlements of tribal communities over local livelihood resources and the development process. The project
needs to focus on strengthening of existing network - Coordination of NGOs working on Adivasis in Dinajpur and link it to different national level institutions and network for leveraging resources and action.
3. Access to land and agriculture development - RDRS needs to undertake a study of the land resource management in North Bengal and prepare an advocacy and development strategy to deal with the issue. For agricultural development the project has to promote farmers organisations and link them to both input and output management.
4. Micro finance and enterprise development based on farm, off-farm, non-farm etc - RDRS has to revisit its policies and operational strategy for developing new MF products for tribal people for their socio-economic development. The organisation has to introduce different products for helping the poor tribal people to meet their emergencies/contingencies, seasonal deprivation, investments for agricultural activities, asset building like purchasing homestead land and agriculture land etc.
5. Human development focusing on education and health - the organisation has to now create mechanisms for gradual handing over of the education centres to the community and help them identifying various options for sustaining these centres. The VDC, MF groups etc need to raise some money for compensating the expenses of the centre. RDRS should develop strategy to work with the government, other NGOs and tribal organisations to strengthen the formal education system in the tribal areas. The project has to create opportunities for higher education to the tribal children through negotiations with different government and private institutions for special privileges, organising scholarships, special preparatory tutorials/bridge courses etc.
6. Preservation and propagation of tribal culture - RDRS may explore for setting up special resource centres for different tribal groups, which will help them and the project to develop curriculum, literature/reading materials, document the cultural heritage etc in local languages. It may continue to help tribal institutions to celebrate different traditional occasions, festivals etc.

Comments from the organisation, if any:
The Report was presented to RDRS by the consultants and reviewed by SF. RDRS has been requested to submit a project document for the second phase of the Project. 2006 has been considered as the bridging period for the strategy review and project document preparation.