Advertisement
Published: December 7th 2007
Edit Blog Post
The BRAC Inn, located in the lower floors of the BRAC Center is a lovely and modern hotel with an excellent restaurant. Here I have been able to slow down a bit and recover from the very intense experience and more challenging living conditions during the first 10 days at Grameen Dialogue.
The highlight of yesterday was meeting with the person who launched the BRAC Uganda program (and lived in Uganda for 14 months to launch the program) and receiving favorable input that we (Daudi, Peter and myself) may be able to call upon BRAC to provide microcredit and health services to the village (Gema) and area (Miseebe) that Daudi grew up and we are wanting to help. They fact that they also provide other services that we are interested in providing - particularly health care - seems to suggest that BRAC might be the ideal partner for us.
I have pretty well overcome a cold - but it hangs on slightly. I have had the laundry done twice through the hotels. The weather has remained quite moderate - slightly on the warm side. No rain or sign of rain.
Today I will have a tour of Dhaka
in a private car with a driver/guide that is generously being provided by BRAC.
Tomorrow I leave for Ranpur on a 7 hour bus ride. This will be my first venture of significant distance on my own. All the arrangements were made by BRAC and I will be picked up at the hotel and taken to the bus station. I will be met in Ranpur by a BRAC manager who will personally host me throughout the visit in the field. I will be staying in one of sixteen training centers that BRAC has in the country and my expectation is that the quarters will be more comfortable than the my field visit with Grameen. I will be gone for six days - two of which are travel and four of which are a very full program. In addition to focusing on their micrcredit program and the group meetings, etc. BRAC has a very diverse group of other humanitarian programs that I look forward to seeing first hand. This includes things like health services, legal aid clinic, many home/business visits, and lots of other programs that I do not recognize the acronyms of.
Because I will be staying in
a training center (versus a Branch Bank with Grameen) I am told their is a good chance I will have Internet access - but I am not sure. So don't worry if you don't hear from me for a week.
I have been thinking about leaving much of my clothes for use in the relief effort - but I realize that my clothes are larger than they could probably wear - so my leaving clothes may not be the helpful act that I would hope.
I have been having trouble receiving messages to my martyjlaptop@cox.net - so if you have sent me an e-mail to that address in the last 24 hours - I have not received it. My most reliable e-mail address has been my AOL address - MJen922648@aol.com - so if you are trying to e-mail me privately - please send it to both my laptop address and my AOL address. I would very much like to hear from more of you. There have been times that I have felt very isolated from and missing you all.
BRAC health programs are particularly interesting. They are determined to provide health care for all from the private
sector and aare already doing that for many million Bangladeshi's. They have been able to combine health care with microcredit in a unique way. BRAC believes that there must be a health care worker in each and every village. They select a women who is a part of the microcredit program from each village and train them to handle 10 basic health care issues and provide them supplies and drugs. BRAC negotiates very favorable drug prices and then recovers a portion of its costs of implementing the program and ongoing oversight by a slight increase of prices to the village health worker who in turns provides a slight mark-up to pay her a wage. There is weekly oversight and ongoing training from the next level facility which also provides the next level health services - and so on. The patient pays a modest price for their drugs - but the rest of the health services are free.
I probably don't need to tell you how our current President is perceived by the Grameen and BRAC personel. Pictures of the Clintons are all over Grameen and BRAC. Bill Clinton had been a very strong advocate for the Nobel Peace Prize
for Professor Yunus (and had hosted Yunus in Arkansas back in the early 90's) and the Clinton Foundation awarded the BRAC Founder one of their first major awards. I have not seen a picture of any other U.S. President here. BRAC committed to the Clinton World Initiative to raise $250 million for humanitarian purposes
Advertisement
Tot: 0.039s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 6; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0188s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb