Month: January 2023

Chronicles of Hard Times: ‘Durdin-er Diaries’ in Bangladesh

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Which governance channels do people whose livelihoods and incomes were severely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic navigate while attempting to bounce back? Through a joint IDS and BIGD research project, we aim to answer this question by exploring the trajectories of recovery, coping strategies, and lived experience of governance of the new poor households in Bangladesh.

We are particularly interested in what some have described as ‘the new poor’ i.e. households who previously had secure, stable livelihoods and were doing okay before the pandemic but have since faced significant economic loss and are now struggling to recover. We know something of how poor individual households respond to sudden changes in income or unexpected expenditures. But the Covid-19 context is different because these changes – or shocks – are collective shocks, including lockdowns, reverse migration, and complete loss of livelihoods. The usual coping strategies where, for example, people turn to their families, wider informal social networks and government resources, were inadequate, as these support structures were themselves severely strained.

Hard times ahead for the new poor

During our initial scoping visits to villages and towns in Khulna division, we spoke to those now living in these new poor households and we learnt about their coping strategies. We found that they are caught in debt-traps and experiencing multiple crises (health, economic, social, and emotional).

For instance, we met Jorimon*, an entrepreneurial widow with a long history of taking loans and repaying them successfully to keep her family afloat. She  has a precarious existence now, caught in cycle of debt after the pandemic and struggling to bounce back.

We also met Kuber, previously a successful fish vendor whose business was badly hit during the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns. Kuber has good connections with local authorities and helps them select poor households for the VGD card list (state social welfare programme beneficiaries), but he is ashamed to claim any form of social assistance himself. Instead, he took a loan out from a microcredit agency and is struggling to repay it. As a ‘middle-class’ person he does not know where else to turn for help: not only does his middle-class status inhibits him emotionally to reach out for help, but his official status as ‘not poor enough’ also makes his family ineligible for most social protection.

We spoke to Nurul Din, a retired jute mill worker with a pension, who owns some agricultural land. Nurul Din found himself at a loss after multiple crises hit the family. His shop had to stay shut for a month, his family were affected by an accident and his daughter got divorced in 2021. He felt that he had to bribe the police in order to get them to work on her case and ensure her in-laws paid her the required compensation.

We also met Mahmudul, a return overseas migrant worker. He had to shut down his business of selling quails during the first lockdown due to speculation around his birds carrying the virus. He found work abroad in Saudi Arabia, but when he arrived, the second wave of Covid19 hit and he lost his job. On top of that, he was imprisoned for being an illegal immigrant. He managed to return to Bangladesh and has since taken multiple loans from informal networks to start another business – but he is struggling to repay the loans.

These are some of the stories we’re encountering that reveal people’s resilience, struggles and experiences of collective shocks. We are hopeful that our work will provide insights into how people living in new poor households are coping, including understanding their networks of assistance and their interactions with varied sources of public authority and support.

How are we doing this? An innovative new method using qualitative panel data

 Over the next nine months we are following the lives and strategies of these new poor households using the Governance Diaries method, which, for the purposes of this project we’ve re-named Durdin-er (Hard Times) Diaries.

 The method brings together the strengths of ethnographic, longitudinal, and comparative work to study changes in complex behaviour. It uses qualitative panel data that identifies lived experiences of governance and service provision, and how that plays out over time in relation to unfolding events or processes – such as the effects of a pandemic. We originally developed this methodology at IDS for a four-year study of how poor and marginalised people solve their governance problems in conflict-affected areas of Mozambique, Myanmar, and Pakistan.

Conducting monthly visits to new poor households to complete these ‘diaries’, we also plan to go up the governance chain, through repeat interviews with formal and informal local public authorities in these locations.

By exploring new poor’s experiences across urban, peri-urban, and rural locations in Khulna, we will be able to compare and reflect on the differences in availability and practices of social protection and other assistance across diverse locations and explore their relations within different governance systems.

In all three locations, we are also interviewing others who play a role in households meeting their governance needs, providing community leadership, or service provision – from government officials to informal intermediaries, private sector actors, local politicians, and service-providing NGOs. This will help us triangulate household-level findings, allowing different perspectives on the same issues to surface. It should also reveal how the views and experiences of those in positions of authority or with service provision responsibility align or not with those of households.

Going the last mile in service delivery chain

We hope to get in-depth evidence over time of people’s experiences in resolving problems that government and policymakers have a direct interest in. More broadly, we hope to identify factors that have supported people’s recovery from the Covid-19 shocks, and the barriers they face in those recoveries, which could inform policy interventions.

We aim to provide policy-relevant findings particularly in relation to how far government support packages and reforms have been able to reach the new poor households, especially those that have experienced the greatest shocks as a result of the pandemic. This will be particularly relevant for policymakers, donors, and NGOs who play a role in making policies, programmes, and services more effectively targeted and accessible. In other words, those policy actors who want to improve the ‘last mile’ of the governance and service delivery chain.

*Names of the respondents have been pseudonymised in line with data protection rules

Salina Aziz is a Senior Program Manager at BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD).

An Opportunity to Deepen Women’s DFS Engagement: Baseline Findings of a Pilot RCT in Bangladesh

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In Bangladesh, the digitization of wages presents an opportunity to introduce women to digital financial services (DFS) at scale. However, little research examines the ways in which digital wages can influence women’s labor force participation and economic empowerment. Dr. Zaki Wahhaj and Maliha Rahanaz of the University of Kent, Canterbury are amongst the first academics to examine this relationship with a pilot randomized controlled trial in Bangladesh titled “Empowering Poor Urban Women in Bangladesh through Digital Financial Services: Does Wage Payment via Mobile Money translate into Economic Empowerment?” In collaboration with HelloTask, a gig economy platform that connects domestic workers to employment opportunities, the research team plans to measure the impact of DFS training and digital wage payments on women’s financial behavior and economic empowerment. The results of their baseline data collection illustrate women’s low DFS knowledge and usage, while highlighting opportunities to leverage DFS to advance women’s economic empowerment.

Baseline Data Collection

The research team conducted baseline data collection in July and August 2022. The team surveyed 564 female domestic workers residing in five low-income communities across Dhaka city. Subsequently, researchers conducted two focus group discussions totaling 28 women across two study zones in September 2022. The team’s results paint an interesting portrait of a typical woman in the sample, as indicated in Figure 1 below.

The study sample consists of relatively young, low-income, low-skilled women who are motivated to relocate in search of better economic opportunities. A majority of women in the sample were in their mid-thirties. 65% are married, and 15% of households are female-headed. Additionally, 17% of the sampled women are the primary earner in their households. These women have low levels of educational attainment – 44% have completed primary school, and less than 20% have completed secondary school. A majority of the women relocated to Dhaka city in search of work, and about half of these women have previously worked with HelloTask as a domestic worker. Finally, almost all women in the sample have access to a personal phone.¹

Findings and Implications 

Baseline survey findings illustrate that women’s lack of awareness of DFS and cash flow constraints limit their engagement with DFS. Conversely, these trends spotlight opportunities for DFS-related capacity building and gender-informed product design.

The women in the sample demonstrated high awareness of basic digital financial services, but low usage. Specifically, 83% of the women in the sample expressed that they have used mobile money at some point, and a majority expressed knowledge of the basic functions of a mobile money account, namely making deposits, withdrawals, and sending funds. However, less than 5% of these women have deposited funds into their mobile money accounts. And among those who send money using mobile money accounts, half have designated another individual, such as a spouse, child or employer, to send transactions on their behalf.

Figure 1: Portrait of a typical woman in the baseline sample *Calculated based on the BDT to USD exchange rate on August 1, 2022

The women infrequently used mobile money to receive funds. Less than one third of women in the sample have used a mobile money account to receive funds, likely driven by their lack of awareness of this function. While 31% of women knew that they could receive their wages from HelloTask into their mobile money accounts, less than 10% reported that they were aware that this function extends to other sources.

While the women saved, they rarely used mobile money accounts to do so. More than two-thirds of women reported saving in the last 12 months, with 42% reporting using a formal savings mechanism. However, less than 1% reported saving in a mobile money account. Women expressed that they immediately cash out funds received, suggesting that they view mobile money accounts as an intermediary step to accessing cash, rather than a mechanism to help them save.

The women demonstrated low awareness regarding the link between economic independence and account ownership. As illustrated through focus group discussions, women equate greater empowerment with earning higher wages. However, they do not associate economic empowerment with improvements along behavioral dimensions, such as financial decision making within the household.

The implications of these findings are several fold:

  • It is evident that for women in the sample, having access to DFS is not sufficient to increase knowledge, awareness, and usage of DFS services.
  • Lack of knowledge about the potential uses of mobile money accounts is limiting these women’s application of the product.
  • Without an understanding of the opportunities that DFS hold, the surveyed women may lack sufficient motivation to use these products more effectively.

In this context, optimism is warranted regarding the efficacy of the research team’s DFS intervention.

Next Steps

The research team launched their intervention, a financial literacy training coupled with digital wage payments, in September 2022. Endline data collection is scheduled to be conducted in September 2023, with final results in hand by the end of the calendar year. The study’s results will hold implications for the estimated 9.5 million female domestic workers in Bangladesh, who stand to benefit from enhanced financial inclusion. Additionally, results will help employers such as HelloTask, who compensate workers via digital wage payments,  design targeted financial training to enhance the wellbeing of their workers. Finally, the study findings may help DFS providers better understand the needs of women living in poverty in Bangladesh more generally, and lead to gender-sensitive DFS and wage digitization innovations.

¹This measure included both feature phones and smart phones.

Results generated by Dr. Zaki Wahhaj and Maliha Rahanaz and summarized by Kym Cole. The research constitutes part of Ms. Rahanaz’s PhD work at the University of Kent under the supervision of Dr Wahhaj and Dr Bansi Malde.

For questions about these results, please contact Dr. Zaki Wahhaj and Maliha Rahanaz at Z.Wahhaj@kent.ac.uk and mr649@kent.ac.uk, respectively.

UPG & Me: 20 Years of the Graduation Approach | Reflections from Yolande Wright

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I moved to Bangladesh in 2004 to work for the UK government’s aid program—the Department for International Development (DFID) at the time—as a Livelihoods and Climate Adviser. One of my responsibilities was to provide livelihood advisory support to what was at the time a relatively small pilot program—CFPR.

My first visit to the program was eye-opening. This was something completely different from the traditional microfinance approaches we’d seen previously from BRAC and other NGOs. For this program, staff had been specially selected and trained not to look for families that might be “safe bets” for microfinance but for the poorest households, living literally and figuratively on the fringes of society. Predominantly female-headed households, these were households headed by women who felt they “had nothing but were nothing” (a quote I attribute to Imran Matin).

What did “extreme poverty” mean?

Some of these women lived in shacks beside larger compounds of relatives; others in graveyards or other communal spaces where they were less likely to be evicted. Most had been abandoned or divorced and had almost no regular income, sometimes working just for food. Some, shockingly, had to give up their children as they simply couldn’t afford to feed them. I remember one woman’s tragic story—that she had sent her daughter to work in the city and was assured by the “go-between” that she’d be safe and looked after, but had never heard from her child again.

I joined some research work, visiting families prior to the interventions, and listened as women described what they had to eat in their home. How rice with a little garlic or chilli was their main meal, and the cooking water with a little rice in it would do for breakfast. How eggs were a luxury afforded only every few weeks. How the last time they ate meat was when they were invited to a wedding. After hearing stories of such low levels of consumption it seemed almost impossible to me how these women and their children were surviving.

The support BRAC provided—addressing multiple aspects of poverty

What the BRAC teams did to support these households was almost miraculous. It was a process of up to two years of intense support, anchored around giving the women an income-generating asset such as 5 or 6 goats, a cow with a calf, or another small business. Each had been calculated to bring in an income that would help to raise the household out of extreme poverty—but sometimes the business might take a few months to start generating income, so additional income support was provided in the form of regular cash payments, alongside coaching, peer support, access to savings groups, legal aid, and much more.

The impact

So when we met women a year or so into the support, there was an incredible difference across a range of outcomes. Everyone had a small income-generating activity that they were hugely proud of. But also their confidence, their outlook, their optimism, and their sheer pride in their accomplishments was evident. I still remember one woman talking to me about how she no longer needed support from BRAC and wanted to help other women who had been in her situation. And the evidence backed up her own testimony—the independent evaluation started documenting increasing numbers of people “graduating” out of extreme poverty and sustaining that situation.

A culture of continuous learning and improvement

The level of commitment that BRAC staff showed was a standout feature for me. They had the “growth mindset” in abundance, always trying to learn and understand what was working and what wasn’t. How effectively did the 10 “graduation criteria” demonstrate sustained improvements? What was missing from the support given?

For example, when the nutritional impact was disappointing, there was a major discussion about shifting from all cash grants to a portion being provided in the form of nutritious lentils. Of course there is often a debate about “cash” or “in-kind” support, but for me the main lesson from this was the staff’s unrelenting commitment to maximizing the benefit for every single household involved. And how best to relieve “mental load,” which Mullainathan and Shafir discuss so well in their book “Scarcity,” which affects people living in extreme poverty. 

The importance of independent and rigorous evaluation

Of course, over the years, the program’s independent evaluation has come back demonstrating the remarkable achievements of the program—not just in immediate “graduation” levels, but also in sustained uplift of living standards.

I was delighted to be able to accompany three senior BRAC staff members to London in late 2006 to meet with the then minister, Hilary Benn, to pitch for what was at the time the largest ever grant to an NGO—a £75 million program to expand CFPR. Of course, the incredible team, armed with great evidence, succeeded in persuading officials and ministers alike of the potential of the program. Funding was approved, and the program went from strength to strength at an unprecedented scale.

Final reflection

I visited the program many times over the next few years, as I remained in Bangladesh until 2008 and then returned again from 2010 to 2012, by which time the UK government had a strategic partnership with BRAC across many programming areas. But CFPR in particular remains special to me. I always try to judge the programs I work on from the perspective of whether I myself would like to be enrolled in or involved if I were on the “receiving end” of the program. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the UPG program in BRAC was one such program.

Yolande Wright is the global director for child poverty, climate, and urban at Save the Children International.

“UPG & Me: 20 Years of the Graduation Approach” is an ongoing blog series from BIGD where researchers and practitioners reflect on the impact of the Ultra-Poor Graduation in framing their perspectives in their worldview. Read the first part here, the second part here, the third part here, the fourth part here, the fifth part here, the sixth part here, the seventh part here and eighth part here.

UPG & Me: 20 Years of the Graduation Approach | Reflections from Khondaker Hasibul Kabir

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One of my earliest encounters with extreme poverty was through BRAC’s Ultra-Poor Graduation (UPG) program. Although I grew up in a village myself and was accustomed to poverty, UPG made me realize what it really means to be extremely poor. As an architect, working with the ultra-poor participants of UPG shaped my future research interest in rural and sustainable architecture. In this sense, UPG helped me experience a transformative graduation from just an architect to an architect of the people – a community architect.

In 2000, after completing my Bachelor’s degree in architecture, I worked in participatory action research projects for developing building-for-safety options in flood-prone rural areas of Bangladesh. It was during this time when I realized that there was a huge dearth of knowledge among architects on the vernacular science of designing rural homesteads and the importance of outdoor spaces in a typical rural homestead. To learn how to design outdoor spaces I did Masters in Landscape Design in 2004. Keen to know more, through the Department of Architecture of BRAC University, I embarked on a journey to Holholia village of Domar, Nilphamari, to work with participants of the CFPR/TUP (Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction/Targeting the Ultra Poor) program, now known as the Ultra-Poor Graduation program. I was advised and supervised by Professor Fuad Hasan Mallick and Dr Imran Matin.

For the ultra-poor in Bangladesh, day-to-day survival is the primary concern of life. From the outside, it may seem that the ultra-poor communities live in the most basic forms of shelters. However, a closer look reveals that the building practices of these communities address sustainability, affordability, and a host of socio-cultural and environmental issues with deeper concern and wisdom than is immediately apparent.

My objective was to better understand rural people and their homesteads—the perceptions and thought process behind designing outdoor spaces and compounds, the concepts of land organization, and the materials used, among other things. In order to truly understand the landscape of the village and its people, I started living in Holholia, in a small neighbourhood called Mozelpara, and was welcomed into the home of two TUP members, Dholi Apa and Shoru Apa. Despite their inability to afford a decent meal for themselves, they would arrange the best possible meal for me, for example, some taki maach with stir-fried potatoes and rice.

A homestead building wall indoors during the dry season. There are no windows in the house. Air and a little light come through leakages in walls and translucent polythene sections. In the building, there is a cooking space and sleeping space through which the cowshed is accessed. A timber yielding, fast-growing tree started to grow spontaneously from the earthen plinth of the building and the family has kept it with care.
An outdoor wall during the dry season — Ms Jalima uses any available materials in its construction, from bamboo, jute rope, tall grasses, rice and wheat straw to polythene, old thin iron sheet, paper, fabric and palm leaves.

Mozelpara was home to the families of six TUP members. I began by documenting everyone’s homes through measured drawings, and the entire neighbourhood joined me in this exercise.

I had no idea that it was possible to engage and work with so many people at once; this is something I learned from my colleagues who were stationed at the BRAC RED research station at Domar to work on the CFPR/TUP program. Actually I learned much more from them. In the early days, I would often accompany the anthropologists and researchers at Domar on their field visits and observe how they would extract valuable insights from local people through conversations and discussions. I was fascinated to see the qualitative research methods like focus group discussions (FGDs) in action.

And it eventually helped me develop my own research method—focus group drawing and discussion (FGDD) and focus group photography and discussion (FGPD). During these discussions, I asked the people of Holholia: if you had the freedom to design your homestead in any way you wanted, without worrying about money or any other constraints, how would you design your home?

We found out that each individual in a household—a boy, a girl, a man, a woman—had different requirements, priorities, and aspirations for the same homestead. Although they were the poorest of the poor, their aspirations were not simply limited to basic needs, and their wish lists were not distinctly different from that of a wealthy individual. Some wanted adequate light and air, some wanted to hear the chirping of birds, and some wanted a private space. We realized that we never really consider any of these requirements when designing rural homesteads, and we never even ask the ultra-poor households how THEY want to design their homes. We simply assume that a basic house will suffice, and that homestead design is the least of their concerns. This was our big takeaway from the UPG experience: freedom to design one’s own spaces heightens aesthetic sensibilities.

Besides this takeaway, we were able to argue that simply providing basic shelter is not enough and rural homesteads need to be designed and built in a collaborative approach along with the people who are meant to inhabit them. In this approach, each household member’s opinions need to be taken into consideration so that they can proudly call the house their home. This is what would be value-adding and sustainable in the long run.

My early experience with UPG participants and their communities also made me see the missed opportunities: rural people are often not aware that they already have access to low-cost, sustainable building materials within their community. They are often guided by preconceived notions of what a non-poor household is supposed to be, for example, a “rich person’s house” is one made of concrete and bricks (i.e., a paka bari) and a mud house (i.e., kacha bari) is a “poor person’s house.”

Instead of simply building concrete units for the ultra-poor without their contribution or participation, we can consider identifying the unique requirements of the homestead and the challenges faced by the communities while living in mud houses. We can equip them with knowledge of cost-effective solutions so that they can find their own housing solutions. This process of collaboration, co-creation and participation can not only provide cost-effective, well-designed housing solutions for the ultra-poor but can also help instil a sense of ownership over their homesteads, while ensuring their dignity is preserved.

Another outdoor wall. A climbing vegetable grows and covers the rooftop. Ms Jalima and her family cut tall grasses grown around the pond and stack them against the wall to dry, ready to be used for repairing buildings.

All these insights profoundly shaped my approach to action research and teaching, and consequently, my life’s goal as an architect of the people of vulnerable communities. Now I prefer to introduce myself as a ‘community architect’.

To me, the most profound aspect of the Graduation Approach is that it instils courage in people who may have thought their fates were sealed to the label of “poverty.” I too, went through this graduation, thanks to my involvement with the program. I now have the courage to live and assimilate with any community I work with – be it in Domar, Korail or Haiti – and learn from the people themselves. In working with people, I learned the breadth and depth of knowledge they have to offer—their insights are so practical, contextual and cost-effective that I now rely on them to provide solutions to complex development challenges. This upside-down approach of having conversations with and learning from people, gaining their insights, and then coming back to the drawing board to design interventions is something I carried forward in my research, academic career and in my practice.

Khondaker Hasibul Kabir is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Architecture, at BRAC University.

“UPG & Me: 20 Years of the Graduation Approach” is an ongoing blog series from BIGD where researchers and practitioners reflect on the impact of the Ultra-Poor Graduation in framing their perspectives in their worldview. Read the first part here, the second part here, the third part here, the fourth part here, the fifth part here, the sixth part here and the seventh part here.