RAISING >2 BILLION HUMANS INTELLIGENCES BY 25 YEARS. After helping with recovery 1970 cyclone killing half a million of his compatriots, Fazle Abed was nearly assassinated by his employer Royal Dutch Shell and the Pakistani army. Fortunately he spent his remaining 50 years celebrating intelligence development of the poorest 2 billion parents notably growth of 1billiongirls. For over quarter of a century all networking was done by word of mouth and sight of book because in Asia 20th c village life still meant no access to electricity grids or telephone lines. Fortunately both Computing Whizs Jobs & Gates were both partly dis-satisfied with western apps of pc networks which they had begun in 1984. Around 2001 they both hosted silicon valley 65th birthday wish parties for Abed as global village tech envoy. Partners in life critical challenges had begun to bring abed's village mothers solar and mobile to co-create with. Abed changed the way Jobs saw tech futures of education (see ) and how Gates saw global health fund foundations and overall the valley's university stanford started to see as far as intelligence of Women and Youth goes the most life critical knowhow for 2 billion humans wasnt directly measurable in 90 day monetary flows; it was measurable in increased life expectancy by over 25 years during Abed's community servant leadership. Probably the greatest lift in intelligence until celebrations of what Fei-Fei Li opened the worlds eyes to in 2012, and Melinda Gates and Nvidia's Jensen Huang were first to helped AIforall lift since 2014.

Wednesday, March 31, 2021

*4 5.2

5.2 culture at heart of sdgs

there are no borders to the solutions needed to end extreme poverty in tropical village asia- death of infants by dehydration is borderless as it the solution train mothers to deliver oral rehydration; response such as nation wide innoculation to infections diseases, or which variants of rice produce most locally depend on variables nature chooses as analogous- so while abed was designing solutions for bangladesh metavillages of 100000 people , many were open sources whether the inventors were borlaug's researchers, abed's researchers, others- to study 50 years of abed's solutions for empowering village women helps you map the greatest human development miracle of all lime - empowerment of billion asian women as poverty alleviation networkers mainly through replicating village microfranchises- when you asked abed what was the overall common denominator he said that in networks he found partners for the culture was that of paulo freire; other last miole health service networks eg those of jim kim and the late great paul farmer www.pih.org echo the same commitment to servant leadership

Fazle abed built sustainability round empowering village women building 100000 person metavillages which over 50 years developed 30 of the world's most vital cooperations in sustainability- the solutions needed replicated through up to 1000*hundred thoussand metavilages in Bangladesh and 9000 other tropical regions particularly in china where many solutions were open sourced in terms of rural women being more productive in human development than men- we belive UN2.0 sustainability goals will also need 100000 person global village networking round family values and women empowerment - see eg here 


unesco 2013 congrees hangzhou- cultural declaration
  • Irina Bokova (Panel Chair), the Director-General of the United Nations EducationalScientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
  • hangzhou declaration

Panellists


Bangladesh Rural Advancement-Collabs NB this post looks mainly at brac's evolution from viewpoint of SDgoal 4 education - see economistwomen.com - for 5 parallel evolutions by first 5 sustainability development goals- eg we see the 6 main women empowerment/COLLAB platforms as 5.1 platform for solving needs of 100000 villagers around 15000 mothers; 5.2 collaboration outreach across asia to billion ending poverty; from1996 abed integrates new tech platforms first 5.3 brac internet then 5.4 collabs of 100 asian university's SDG graduates; all the while brac has been a partnership platform connecting villages in climate adaptation which leads us to 5.6 zoom me up scottie from abed's graduation glasgow university circa 1958 to climate cops 


young journalists and i visited bangladesh 15 times during fazle abed's lasr decade+-acrually 2007-19 

we became convinced that youth as first sustainability generation would be easy if only there were more people like fazle abed- we have the tech and human brains to beat covid, to align with nature, to love children..

we've catalogued 36 ways - 6 dimensions by 6 times - over sir fazles last 50 year action learning networking when different resources connected to help the poorest mothers in the world build the rural nation of bangladesh and to celebrate anyone who helped them (footnote 1);  to get to know abed from his alumni , investors and others who love the goal that wherever the next girl (or boy is born) she's has a happy and great chance at life

education is the way that excites us mst becausethe way abed saw life everyone's both a student (and skills teachers as parent or community servant)
four education dimensions connect typical student age- 
    from leaflet starting abed's last of 5 decades 2010s

..footnote 5.2 bangladesh mothers most amazing supporters- get out map of continent asia 1971 - can you see why chinese village mothers faced similar life-shaping challenges?- back in 1971 bangladesh was the porrest 75 million person nation and china the poorest 750 million person nation- and both countries peoples came to the conclusion that only female productivity could collaboratively save their space on the planet- last mile health livelihoods, last mile food livelihoods, last mile financing, last mile education -all became a billion womens challenge to entreprenurially solve...
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playschool summer tour 2021- related web - twitter  linkedin
We are on a journey to redefine play and reimagine learning. Because play is how children learn best.
MORE LEGO EDU TWITTERS - VENTURES IN EDU
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https://www.brac.net/program/education/

5.2 next billion women and 3.1 oral rehydration networking -ort recipe pinchful of salt/fist of sugar/half litre boiled water

Daily Star 9 March 2021

 g irene khan chair brac international    UN Special Rapporteur for freedom of expression and opinion, bio

recalls sir fazle abed- what if every country in asia (or indeed everywhere) had enjoyed through the last half century an inspiring connector of women's productivity lifts up half the sky


"BRAC's approach has been to put power in the hands of the poor, especially poor women and girls," said Sir Fazle Hasan Abed. 

We were sitting in his office on the 19th floor of the BRAC Headquarters in Dhaka. Abed Bhai was describing BRAC's pioneering work with women and girls. Although I had heard him recount these anecdotes many times and had also seen some of the programmes on the ground, it was always inspiring to listen to him.

3.1 Twelve million mothers learned to make oral rehydration therapy so that children would no longer die from diarrhea. 

Article
Full-text available
Sugar-based oral rehydration therapy (ORT) for diarrhoea is promoted in many countries of the world. One programme in Bangladesh has instructed more than 13 million mothers in the preparation of a sugar-salt solution in the home; despite very high rates of correct mixing and knowledge, subsequent application was found in only some 20% of all diarrh...
Article
Home-made oral rehydration solutions (ORS) have been promoted in developing countries for preventing dehydration due to diarrhoea. Evaluations of this method must take into account the effective usage rates achieved and the safety of the solutions used. A community programme organized by the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) has visited...
Article
Full-text available
Mothers in over 5 million Bangladeshi households were taught how to prepare and use an oral rehydration solution containing lobon (local salt) and gur (unrefined sugar). An evaluation of the results has demonstrated the value of the programme and has shown how improvements can be made in the teaching process as well as in the preparation and admini...

2.4 Thousands of rural women became poultry micro-entrepreneurs, rearing and vaccinating chickens and spurring the growth of a new sector in the rural economy. 

Hundreds of thousands of housewives trained as para-professional teachers and even larger numbers as 3.2 community health workers so that elementary education and primary healthcare could be available in every village. Millions of women pulled themselves and their families out of poverty with BRAC's support, improving their lives materially and also gaining voice and respect in their households and communities.

As dusk fell over the slums and rooftops of Dhaka that evening, Abed Bhai turned from talking about what BRAC had achieved for women and girls in Bangladesh to what still remains to be done elsewhere, about where and how it must scale up, innovate, break barriers and set new records. His plans were as audacious as ever, his energy seemingly abundant. But we both knew time was running out for him and the baton must pass on to others. When we next met a few months later, it was to say goodbye as he lay in bed, his eyes closed. Weeks later, on December 20, 2019, Sir Fazle Hasan Abed passed away.   

Of all the remarkable contributions for which Abed Bhai is remembered today, I believe none has been more ambitious in scale, nor more impactful in consequence, than his work to empower women and girls. His ground-breaking approaches to development turned perceived wisdom on its head and transformed the lives of millions of women and girls in Bangladesh and beyond.

Watching women toil in the villages and small towns of Bangladesh, he saw in their thrift, ingenuity and resilience the promising talent of would-be entrepreneurs. Women became the key resource as well as the subject of BRAC's poverty eradication strategies.

With astute business sense, Abed Bhai invested heavily in women and girls through education, health, legal services and microfinance programmes, income generation opportunities, community development and social mobilisation. BRAC's approach of working directly with communities to develop solutions and of testing, monitoring and modifying programmes constantly to make them more responsive gave new meaning to women's empowerment.

3.1 Women's agency was explicit in what is one of BRAC's—and Bangladesh's—great success stories: the Oral Rehydration Therapy (ORT) programme. Over a decade, starting from 1979, BRAC visited around 11.8 million homes, covering 98 percent of the total rural households, to teach at least one woman in each household to make oral rehydration therapy with a three-finger pinch of salt, a handful of gur (molasses) and half a litre of boiled water. With no particular skills needed, ingredients available in every home and a simple technique for measuring, mothers produced oral rehydration solutions to treat diarrhea and reduce infant mortality. Today, Bangladesh has one of the lowest death rates from diarrhea and one of the highest user rates for ORT in Asia.

In the early 1980s, BRAC created income generation opportunities for women in poultry rearing and trained women to vaccinate chickens for a fee. The government provided free vaccines but there was no cold chain to carry the vaccines from the office of the sub-district livestock officer to the villages. So, BRAC devised a simple system by which the vaccines were packed inside ripe bananas to preserve the temperature and provide protection against damage during transport.

These are just a few examples of Abed Bhai's down-to-earth approach to development and his relentless drive for scaling up. He was thrifty, creative and persevering, just like the poor women he admired so much. Today, frugal innovation on scale is a badge that BRAC wears with great pride.

With his characteristic audacity, Abed Bhai carried BRAC's development models to other geographies. From adolescent girls in BRAC's schools in Helmand, Afghanistan to the BRAC community health micro-entrepreneurs in small towns in Uganda, thousands of woman and girls broke barriers to take control of their own destiny. 

1.3 One of BRAC's most transformative programmes is the Ultra Poor Graduation initiative, which focuses on the poorest and most marginalised families, usually women-headed households, who are unable to afford even one full meal a day, live on the fringes of society and are caught in the inter-generational trap of extreme poverty. For two years, the women are given an income generating "asset" (such as a cow or chickens), a stipend, healthcare, and education for their children, alongside training and counselling to build their financial capabilities, a sense of self-worth and become integrated into the community. Results show that over 95 percent of the almost 1.5 million women and their families benefitting from this programme have "graduated" out of ultra-poverty, and even more remarkably, have continued to improve their lives. Many have become successful microfinance savers and borrowers.

As always, Abed Bhai was keen to scale up and readily shared BRAC's experiences with others. Today, the Ultra Poor Graduation Initiative is being replicated in 45 countries with impressive results.

Abed Bhai knew that development cannot be sustained if it does not change the social and cultural norms that hold back the progress of women and girls, but to be successful, the change itself must take into account the cultural context of the community. So, to make girls' education culturally acceptable to tradition-bound families and communities in Afghanistan, BRAC trained thousands of female teachers and engaged hundreds of older women to chaperone the girls from home to school and back. In Bangladesh, where the social context is different, popular theatre and public campaigns are used to transmit messages on gender equality, women's groups are mobilised at the village level to advocate for social change and thousands of paralegals are trained to resolve family disputes in ways that respect women's human rights.

Whether in Afghanistan, Bangladesh or many other countries, the major barrier to women's empowerment and gender equality remains patriarchal values. "Patriarchy is an enemy to both men and women," Abed Bhai declared on International Women's Day in 2018, acknowledging that gender equality was his "unfinished agenda".

Ultimately, the poor woman's struggle is not only a struggle to increase material assets but a struggle for equality, justice and dignity. Much remains to be done to make the world a safer, more equal place for women and girls. The pandemic has made that task harder, and also more urgent and vital. But when I think back to that evening in Abed Bhai's office and how he not only made the impossible possible but also sustainable and scalable, I feel optimistic. The arc of development is long but it bends towards gender equality.

 

Irene Khan is an international thought leader and advocate on human rights, gender and social justice issues. She is a member of BRAC International governing body.