Pathways South Asia - Project News
- Community Health Workers as Change Makers
- Stories from the Hill Tracts
- Ekushey Bookfair - four new reports launched
Community Health Workers as Change Makers
'Women community health workers were pioneers in bringing rural women to outside formal paid work and breaking conservative norms and female seclusion', said Simeen Mahmud, lead researcher, at a research findings seminar held for this quantitative study in Dhaka in May 2010.
The seminar was jointly organised by BRAC Development Institute (BDI) and ICDDR,B an international institute involved in health and population research. The event received coverage in various local newspapers: The Daily Star, The Daily Independent, Daily News Today, The Bangladesh Observer and Prothom Alo.
The seminar was organised to share the findings of the research on women community health workers which explore how the workers have been instrumental in bringing social change in their communities. This research was conducted by Simeen Mahmud and Maheen Sultan under the Empowering Work theme of the Pathways Programme.
Simeen went on to say that the women health workers had found that their job had enhanced their status in society, helped them find better life partners, enhanced family economic conditions, instilled self-esteem and confidence and gave them more power in family decision making.
Stories from the Hill Tracts
The Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), situated in the south-eastern corner of Bangladesh, is a distinct region in terms of its ethnic, cultural and environmental diversity. The CHT people have been deprived of many socio-economic and political rights and an armed insurgency was waged against the government until the signing of a Peace Accord in 1997.
Pathways of Women’s Empowerment South Asia organised a Digital Storytelling workshop in Rangamati, the Chittagong Hill Tracts, from 18-22 April 2010. The aim of the workshop was to engage participants from research being conducted in those areas by Pathways SA on security perspectives and media production by minority communities. The workshop is part of the Conceptualising Empowerment Research theme.
Digital stories, which are part oral history and part personal archiving, are 2-3 minute films that participants make to record experiences of their lives in their own words, voices and perspectives. This complete control over one's story which a participant has is what makes digital stories so unique and powerful.
Many participants at the workshop spoke of the excitement they felt at having created a story about their life by themselves and they felt motivated to go back to their communities and share their learning.
One participant said that the workshop had allowed her to speak up about a traumatic incident in her past and the experience of presenting it to a roomful of strangers had proved cathartic and allowed her to put it behind her and move forward. Her emotional speech was a reminder of the power of storytelling, how it heals, how it helps us remember incidents in our own way, and how it deeply validates our experiences.
Links:
Annual Report 2009/2010
What!!! - Lopita Huq's Digital Story, from Digital Storytelling Training Workshop, Pathways South Asia, November 2009
Ekushey Bookfair
Imran Matin and Firdous Azim at the launch
Pathways of Women’s Empowerment South Asia based at the BRAC Development Institute launched four research reports in Bangla at the Ekushey Book Fair, the largest and the most prestigious book fair in Bangladesh. The reports are aimed at reaching a wide spectrum of Bangla speaking audiences around the country. Dr. Imran Matin, Deputy Executive Director of the BRAC Africa Programmes, launched the publications on 20 February 2010 at the ‘Nazrul Moncho’ within the grounds of Bangla Academy, where the month-long Book Fair was held. It is hoped that by making the reports available through this bookfair the research findings will influence the way the general public consider women’s work, women’s engagement with religion and media and the movement building strategies of women’s organisations.
The Ekushey Book Fair is the most important cultural and literary annual event in Bangladesh. The Fair pays homage to the Language Movement of the country by commemorating the Bangla language in all its manifestations. Nearly four hundred publishing houses have stalls showcasing novels, poetry books, research papers, children’s books, etc, and the daily programme features lectures, seminars, poetry recitations, painting competitions and theatre productions. The Book Fair is free and open to all and draws large crowds from all over the country.
The language of the reports have been kept clear, with limited use of research/social science jargon, in order to make the content as accessible to the wider fair-going audience as possible.
The reports are:
- Media in the Eyes of Women: New Possibilities? by Aanmona Priyadarshini
- Women at Work: Aspirations and Limitations by Sakiba Tasneem
- Women and Religion: A Changing Relationship by Sahida Islam Khondaker and Samia Huq
- Women’s Movements and Constituency Building: An Analysis by Sohela Nazneen and Maheen Sultan
Fairgoer looking at the reports
The research reports are available to buy individually or as a boxed set entitled Women’s Empowerment in Bangladesh: Debates and Possibilities, that contains the four reports plus an overview piece written by Sahida Islam Khondaker and Firdous Azim. The Pathways Programme has entered into an agreement with the University Press Limited (UPL), the leading publication house in Bangladesh, who will distribute the reports via its stall at the Ekushey Book Fair and its various networks. Boxed sets are also being sent to newspaper editors and universities in an attempt to bring them into public discourse through newspaper reviews and classroom engagements. By making its research findings available in the national language and reaching audiences through popular outlets such as the Ekushey Book Fair, the Pathways Programme expects to influence public thinking and make a lasting impact within the communities in which it works.
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