Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Thank you, Abed bhai | BRAC

He was Sir Fazle Hasan Abed to the world. To us he was simply "Abed Bhai". Thank you, Abed bhai. Visit: www.brac...

Basically BRAC's Fazle Abed was the real 50 year story of south asian village girl educational & economics development over 50 years - not muhammad yunus but he was also much more than that

As a teenager in East Pakistan he went to Glasgow University to study engineering and then as a chartered accountant he had become Shell Oil's CEO for East Pakistan when a local cyclone 1970 killed half a million people all around him- he sold his putney flat and with 16000 pounds but a lot of connections settled in a village region of bangladesh where from a dozen or more concepts the first 2 biggest solutions for how women could develop villages were

china 's barefoot medics -fortunately this started up decades of shared solutions between poorest village china and brac

borlaug's rice science

abed designed microfranchises so that a village women could learn either of these trades and make positive cashflow - fortunately james grant at unicef understood that barefoot medics teaching mothers to do oral rehydration could save lives of infants a third of whom were dying from dehydration and supported fazle scaling across 200000 villages late 1970s

so with there was now the need to design banking for 200000 villages - about half a million barefoot nurses and rice growing businesses owned by village mothers - microfinance was the banking system/trust tailormade to train and designing value chains round village womens networks

each decade fazle abed leapt ahead with both education and livelihood innovations -he was patient when needed to be but he almost always saw what the next opportunity would be that bottom up servant leaders could do differently from top-down government -he never argued with government, he simply scaled what they had no access or passion to do in the villages-in the 80s his village mothers asked for primary schools - so brac eventually sustained 50000 schools-fazle abed would always prefer to be a servant leader of action learning -belatedly he has won all the largest education prizes

as well as becoming the national leader in poultry and dairy in the 1990s and starting a city bank so as to be represented in every part of the national value chain

as mobile and solar tech became available the 2000s 2010s and 2020s were the most extraordinary

-for the first time brac went international in the 2000s - this has led to it now being the largest ngo partnership economy in the world all in trust for bottom billion girls

in 2010s bKash | It's that simple a model for digital banking bottom billion has evolved - today main partners are bill gates and jack ma

when my father died 2010 sir fazle and his tech wizard keynoted 2 roundtables at the Japan embassy in dhaka - dad had earned the emperors prize for his work at The Economist advancing win-win economic models out of japan and across asia pacific since 1962

we were amazed to hear how fazle abed wanted his legacy to be a university that linked all asian sustainability solutions together through a ring of partnerships with eg hong kong singapore tokyo beijing and back across every asian country which at one time the brits had colonised especially wherever cultural reconciliation is most needed for girls to thrive

vincent chang was headhunted to relaunch brac university with ban ki-moon asking the university to get in the middle of community & climate adaptability research http://www.gca.org -

The first year of this new movement will land on glasgow cop26- of course I am sad that Fazle Abed as Glagow U's greatest alumni since adam smith didnt get to see attempts of all his partners to unite this

If this is the sort of map your institute wants to help web its best I introduce you directly to vincent chang as there is so much direct work to do :2/3 people are asian and can lead sdg decade if japan korea china and bangladesh linkin now around bottom up community solutions as well as infrastructure for sme networking and AI education - i am a statistician and researcher but not an implementer, so hope to help brac U search out partners who want youth to scale pan asia sdg solutions

- yes this version of DC seems not to value such an sdg-youth search yet

(I come from 5 generations of diaspora scots who love all peoples we have worked with and prefer not to spend time on the stuff nationalist politicians rule over)

happy holidays chris macrae +1 240 316 8157

sustainability world's most exciting puzzle - welcome to socialbusiness.tv chinathanks.com microeducate and microfranchise 3 billion jobs

chinathanks.com microeducate and microfranchise 3 billion jobs

Kon'nichiwa normanmacrae.net economistdiary.com who's worldrecordjobs.com who? AI Trillionmoore than 60s: Reiwaj...

sustainability world's most exciting puzzle - welcome to socialbusiness.tv

Friday, December 20, 2019

sir fazle abed

we mourn the loss of the greatest hero we have ever been privileged to meet sir fazle abed
he developed systems of collaboration that are benchmarks for village women to end poverty by maximising community last mile service/franchises
in health
food security
community safety/resiliency
finance
livelihood education
if you now where optimal case studies are published we welcome the chance to celebrate - chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk

sir fazle changed top down disaster relief and development from trickle down charity to locally sustainable business models

brac partnerships - built on trust in abed to be the largest in ngo world can be mapped in two halves of fazle abed's 50 years dedication to poverty alleviation before which he spent 10 years ascending to east pakistan regional ceo at royal dutch shell - and like gandhi being a teenage student abroad in fazle abeds case being in the 200th class studying markets and machines at glasgow university started by adam smith and james watt

first quarter of century - all peer to peer or paper based as villagers had no aceess to electricity grids

second quarter of century as partners brought mobile and solar to villages how could brac go 3 dimensional
- global where other nations wanted to replicate brac community solutions,
national market leadership so that brac could design total value chaines to integrate poorest
local- last mile- across 100000 village microfranchises

we will try to build some tours celebrating the legacies sir fazle hoped that he had seeded - in particular brac university as one of the lead partners of soros osun network launched at world economic forum round 20 colleges and researchers most concerned with youth being the sdg generation

and understanding the fit of 7 parts to the financial services value chain which ranged from fintechs number 1 platform the unbanked bkash linkin in final partners of fazle aded including jack ma's ant finance and gates foundation.

ultra poverty research- whose systemcn alalysis earned boston poverty lab a nobel prize

we also miss one of the 5 deepest networkers fighting against infectious diseases a coalition that came together with soros funding to include bostons jim kim and paul farmer and medecins sans frontieres in ebola hit liberia and sierra leone two of the nations that soros had selected for brac international to support

Sunday, November 24, 2019

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Facilitating learning, development, and healing for refugee children through play.

BRAC Humanitarian Play Labs

Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh

Humanitarian Play Labs bring BRAC's signature low cost, high quality play-based learning model to the humanitarian context of the largest refugee settlement in the world in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. They integrate playful learning with child protection, psychosocial support, and linkages to critical services; incorporate relevant cultural traditions; and engage both Rohingya and host communities.

CHILD-CENTERED, CHILD FRIENDLY SPACES, CHILD PROTECTION, COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT, COUNTRIES IN HUMANITARIAN CRISIS, CULTURALLY SENSITIVE, DEVELOPING ECONOMY, FAMILY ENGAGEMENT, GENDER EQUITY, LOW RESOURCE ENVIRONMENTS, PLAY-BASED LEARNING, PSYCHOSOCIAL SUPPORT

Introduction Media Milestones Map

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INTRODUCTION

What are Humanitarian Play Labs?

“Above all else, we want everyone who comes through these doors to know that they are safe here. While the situation outside may be uncertain, children can come here every day and be themselves. They can be happy and free.”

Hamida Akhter Jahan, BRAC Psychosocial Counselor

Nearly one million displaced Rohingya are living in crowded settlements in the Cox’s Bazar district of southern Bangladesh, having fled persecution in Myanmar. Violence against the Rohingya has persisted for decades, but following the mass exodus that began in August 2017, Cox's Bazar has become the site of the largest refugee settlement in the world, affecting hundreds of thousands of children and their families.

The majority of the newly displaced Rohingya are children, and almost 20 percent are under the age of five. Many of these children arrived in Cox’s Bazar unaccompanied.

In emergency and humanitarian contexts like Cox’s Bazar, children are extremely vulnerable to abuse, violence, and trafficking. It is vital to provide these children – and their caregivers – with psychosocial support, safe spaces, and playful early learning and stimulation opportunities that help address trauma, support healthy development, provide a sense of routine and normalcy, and restore cultural pride.

To address some of these children’s most pressing needs, BRAC has established Humanitarian Play Labs, which adapt BRAC's signature low cost, high quality early learning model, Play Labs, to the unique needs and constraints of the humanitarian context in both the Rohingya settlements and the host communities surrounding the settlements. The Play Lab model is an innovative play-based learning model for children aged 3-5, created in partnership with the LEGO Foundation. Designed to be adapted and scaled across a number of low-resource contexts, BRAC currently operates a network of Play Labs across Bangladesh, Uganda, and Tanzania. The Humanitarian Play Lab model builds on the success of Play Labs, refining and expanding the model to reach a wider age range of children in more challenging humanitarian contexts.

In order to build resilience and establish a sense of normalcy for children and adolescents in this fragile setting, Humanitarian Play Labs offer a play-based curriculum that incorporates instructional scaffolding to reach children aged 0-14. For many Rohingya children, the Humanitarian Play Labs are their first opportunity to gain access to education, or their first chance to be in a learning environment where educators are attentive to their individualized needs. Lessons incorporate physical play, rhymes, stories, dance, art, and more as tools for learning and healing.

Humanitarian Play Labs also pay homage to Rohingya cultural heritage by utilizing traditional Rohingya rhymes, games, and activities and engaging mothers and community members in creating low-cost, culturally relevant play materials to support children’s language, motor, cognitive, and socio-emotional development.

In addition to education, Humanitarian Play Labs provide holistic support for Rohingya children. They incorporate child protection measures; link children to health, nutrition, and other services; and host parenting sessions that do the same. They also link children and their families to psychosocial support through group sessions and individual home visits conducted by barefoot counselors and para-counselors.

Each session in a Humanitarian Play Lab is jointly led by a woman from the Rohingya community and a woman from the host community, who speaks a dialect of Bangla similar to the Rohingya language. This model trains and empowers Rohingya women, and promotes person-to-person peacebuilding between the communities, which is critical in addressing tensions that are arising over strained resources.

A new, $100 million partnership with LEGO Foundation, Sesame Workshop, and International Rescue Committee will innovate upon the Humanitarian Play Lab model to incorporate Sesame Street's world-class multi-media learning content into BRAC's existing network of nearly 400 Humanitarian Play Labs and double the network to reach an additional 50,000 children. It will also bring learnings from BRAC's groundbreaking Humanitarian Play Lab model to inform work that Sesame Workshop and the International Rescue Committee are doing with refugee children in the Syrian response region.

Founded in Bangladesh in 1972 as a small relief effort, BRAC is now a world-class global development organization, and was ranked the number one NGO in the world for the fifth time in 2019. Humanitarian Play Labs build on the organization's expertise as one of the world’s leading education providers for marginalized children, with more than 11 million graduates and over a million current learners.

With over four decades of experience working in nearly every corner of Bangladesh, BRAC has a deep knowledge of the context and strong relationships with local communities. As a result, when the refugee crisis began, BRAC mobilized resources from across the country in a matter of days. Currently, its more than 2,500 staff in Cox’s Bazar provide a range of services in addition to Humanitarian Play Labs including shelter, nutrition, health, water, sanitation, protection, and skills training, working in collaboration with UN agencies, governments, and other NGOs.

BRAC has identified the need for a long-term, sustainable model of child protection and education across multiple humanitarian contexts, and is currently creating a toolkit that will enable its Play Lab model to be contextualized and adapted for other resource-poor, post-disaster, and humanitarian contexts around the globe.