It takes a community

My time to reflect on what I have been doing for the last month is upon me.  Tomorrow I should be landing in Canada but I will continue to ponder what I have been a part of.  For the past 30 days I have been working and living closely with a number of people and now that I am going to be on my own it will really contribute to this reflection.

To summarize the key element of what we presented, it all revolves around getting a strong social structure in place in the villages first.  Without that, it continues that it is each smallholder for themselves to continue being price takers to the market.  This has such an impact. From the Canadian perspective, I take for granted that we are represented by our local municipal government and I can just drive over to an office at any point and let them know my thoughts.  If I am unhappy, I can vote differently the next time.  If I want a strong voice, I can talk to my Grain Farmers of Ontario representative or email any number of people in the industry and have my voice heard.  But I can do all of these things because well before my time, people worked hard to organize themselves and put a system in place.  I am not saying it always works, but at least there is a system.

This is simply not the case for the smallholder in our villages.  They don't understand how to work together and are just in the forming stage of learning what this can offer them.  After this is in place, then the next elements of our idea can take shape and this revolves around better understanding and safer use of products (man made or natural) and working together to aggregate their crop outputs to have a stronger voice with a buyer (whether local or export).  This concept isn't rocket science but the execution is where the success or failure will be decided.  I have learned that there is no shortage of ideas that have been developed but it is the execution through the NGO's or their partners that is the final determination.  And as always there is not an endless well of money, so getting it right as soon as possible will help to provide more desire for scaling up to more villages.

     

Another key element is that the many stakeholders need to be on board with the idea or it will crumble.  So with that we had many validating meetings before the final presentation.  I feel very positive that we laid out a solid plan that will make a difference, but like everything in life, we have to keep pushing to make sure that it stays top of mind with our on the ground partners as we all leave Bangladesh.

Lucky for us we have a great on the ground project manager!  Kafil was with our team from the start and he put up with all the challenges that our team provided and he taught us so much about life in Bangladesh, facilitated our meetings, gave us fantastic translation and guided us to consider how important the social aspect plays in everything we would do.  He also kept us safe which I know my family is very thankful for!