Concern working to improve life-style of poor Bangladeshis: Crawley

Exclusive interview with Bangladeshinfo.com Concern, one of the leading international NGOs, has been working in Bangladesh for more than 35 years to help improve the socio-economic status of Bangladesh. They work for the poverty-riddled Bangladeshis to improve their lifestyle keeping in mind - ‘Poverty is unjust in this world’.

It is one of the leading NGOs that worked for the Sidr affected people in last November, sending relief materials and still helping them out of the trauma and start rebuilding life anew.

In an exclusive interview with Bangladeshinfo.com, Concern’s country director Kieron Crawley talked about the NGO’s operations in Bangladesh and their future course of action at his city office recently.

Concern has been working for the Sidr victim people from November to rebuild their homes and lead them to return to a normal course of life. This leading NGO has been running operation to improve the health and nutrition sector of our country and helping millions of children get out of the malnutrition trap.In another project, they are working to improve the lifestyle of the poorest portion of urban segment. This project is to transfer their lifestyle by giving them better opportunities and facilities.

Concern is also planning to launch projects to deal with the price hike of essentials as the poor and fixed income groups are suffering most from the price hike phenomenon.

Concern is also interested to work on the climate change issues as the global worming is affecting the life and habitation of Bangladesh. Crawley said, ‘And if we look at how climate changes likely to affect the country then we see that we need to be making some preparations both in our rural and urban prorgammes to actually make sure that both government and the people in Bangladesh are in good position to be able to cope with those very significant changes when they come about.’

Below is the full excerpt of the interview.

When did concern start its operation in Bangladesh?

Concern started working in Bangladesh 35 years ago. And we essentially came to Bangladesh to response to an emerging humanitarian situation after cyclone and shortly after the cyclone we had the liberation war in Bangladesh. We worked with the large numbers of people who were displaced as a result of that as part of the work in home and abroad with displaced people in the borders near India, people who were refugees from Bangladesh as a result of the war of Independence. Essentially it was provided to those people who were suffering from the result of liberation war.

Over the years our work expanded competition till the capacity of government and local bodies to tackle the wider poverty in Bangladesh in many parts of the country. We developed the programmes in many parts of the country on health, nutrition and education particularly. More recently we developed the expertise in the HIV/AIDS.

Does Concern have any working partner in Bangladesh? If yes then how do you work together?


We have a range of partners. We have worked with partners which ranges from some quite small, emerging NGOs based in some rural areas. We work through to NGO which are well established at the national level and have a strong influence for example on government policy and decision makers. We have got a range of partners also ranging from grass root levels up to national policy level where we also need to bring about some change.

Do you have any project with the government?

Yes, in fact almost all of our projects are engaged with government at some level because ultimately what we are trying to do is to bring about some permanent positive change. So we talk about all of our projects through the relevant ministries. We often deal at ministerial level and in humanitarian situation we deal at advisor level.

What are the achievements in Bangladesh so far?

Well, Concern is working in Bangladesh for 35 years for now which is significant. I think we have made significant achievements in terms of our work particularly in the areas of health and nutrition. At the moment what we are looking at is how we can help government to apply some of the learners to learn tactfully on nutrition in the rural areas and urban areas. For example: one of our current projects is testing the government model to tackle malnutrition. Amongst rural areas we are testing that models in urban areas into the slums and trying to look at how we can adopt and modify that to make it a practice. I think we have also effected in the emergency response together with many others of course with NGOs and government in building populations, to prepare for understand emergency, I think when we have to look at the statistics to see that the number of people don’t parish in Bangladesh in the result of natural disaster is actually very much than it was less 15/20 years ago. If you look at the statistics that come out of in the terrible disaster of Burma recently, the impact of the disaster is many many times higher than disaster in Bangladesh, which was a similar size of cyclone 8/9 months earlier. So, I think that the result of all of the good work that organization like concern and other doing to help prepare for country better for natural disaster.

In which districts concern operates?

We don’t work in particular geographical areas but when we think about them it’s not actually particularly geographical area where they are but in terms of context, because that’s what helps us understand the nature of poverty, so where as we work is virtually all areas of Bangladesh.

We classify them for example: in terms of whether they are urban because we know that in urban areas poverty is different from the poverty in rural areas. People who are poor in urban areas are living in slums, living in undeveloped slums, they squat along in railways or in public places or sometimes they don’t have any place to live in, and they live on the pavements. So, we say that urban areas are one of the public places that we focus on. Again when we look at rural Bangladesh, we can see that many parts of the rural Bangladesh have poverty but they are particularly where there is extreme poverty, we call those rural poverty pockets. They are tend to be in remote areas and we have realized that they are typically are areas which we know as ‘Char’ or ‘Hawr’ areas as there is a subject to erosion by river or by flooding and the people who have lived there have very fragile, vulnerable lifestyle over there. That would be second area that we focus on and the third area which is not actually geographical or physical area, is really an area of people of society, people who are socially merged. You can find the people who are socially merged in the countryside. For example: sex workers because what they do and ethnic group who are poor essentially because they are denied the rights and the accessories what other people are enjoying.


There is a general perception in Bangladesh that NGOs are misusing funds and the funds are being consumed by the high officials of the NGOs. What is your analysis on this issue?

Yes, I think it’s inevitable when you have such a large NGO sector in a country like Bangladesh. In one sense, that’s one of the strength of Bangladesh that they have a large and vibrant NGO sectors. On the other hand, when you have so many actors in that sectors, inevitably you are going to have some which are less disciplined and less integrity than others in some cases. Some of them will undoubtedly use funds and resources inappropriately.

What is your estimation of the role of local NGOs in our country?

That’s one of the grate strength of Bangladesh that there are many local NGOs and I think if you look at many countries in where Concern works, its very difficult to find that any local organization are be in a position to be able to take on the work that’s required in the country and that’s really part of the country’s development. But I think to our great delight in long way run that there are many organizations that we can work with.

Because we are not here to replace local organizations, we are here to add value and to complement the capacity already exist here. So, that’s why for example all of our work in Bangladesh is implemented through local partners.
Concern no longer implements projects directly. We do that through local organizations. That means, the impact of our work spread very much more widely because we can reach a lot of people.
We can see that this is very important to develop the country.

Is concern going to launch any new project soon?

Yes and we are constantly in the process of developing and launching new projects to work with some of the poorest people in Dhaka, those who live in the slums, who squat, who have no place to live in. This project will work over 5 years with 10,000 families who live on pavements. We try to give them better choices and opportunities in life. We have upcoming projects in the pipeline. One of those is to look at providing better house, access to health services in some remote rural areas in particular in ‘Hawr’ and we have another health and nutrition project which will be launched in the next number of months and that’s looking specially at health and nutrition amongst poor people who are living in urban areas, in undeveloped slums and squats.

What was Concern’s project in SIDR affected area?

Yes, when the cyclone is caught that part of Bangladesh some month ago in November, Concern being a humanitarian organization of course immediately mobilized to respond to the people who have been affected by the terrible disaster. I think, I am proud that Concern is the 1st NGOs to help the people on the ground in the areas that were heavily affected, talking to people, listening to their experience of the storm and working out trying to what an organization could do to bring some immediate relief to those people. We very quickly established relationships to local organizations and local partners and began to channel relief, materials through to people who had been worst affected. And that emergency relief programme occupied us for first numbers of months in that area. Following the emergency response which is to meet people immediately to food and shelter and the next stage of course to help people to rebuild their lives and get them back to earning and living and surviving as close as possible to home.


What is concern’s future plan for Bangladesh operation?

We’ve recently some time reflecting on how we organize and approach our work and that led us to developing our programmes now, what we called poverty context, which I described earlier. We are trying to help the poor people living in urban areas, trying to help transfer the lives of poor people in rural areas and trying to tackle the poverty amongst the people who are socially excluded and lots of quite a new ways for looking at things for us. We are convinced that will allow us to look at our work in fresh ways that also make our work very much effective. It will allow us to measure the impact on our work in a look, impact for actually having the lives of poor people in a much more direct way. And it also makes us as an organization more accountable to the people whom we are committed to help in Bangladesh that is poor and extremely poor people. Over the next number of years we will be making sure that why have our works is cemented in place and we will be monitoring that to see how we perform. We will also be of course constantly monitoring our own roles as an NGO in Bangladesh, how we work, what is our relationship with the local NGOs. So, I think that’s another area. You will see some significant developments.

We are of course aware that Bangladesh along with many other countries in the world is facing a new challenge. That is the price and cost of food stuffs around the world have gone up significantly and that’s really give us a whole set of challenges particularly when we are working with the poorest people who are very vulnerable to any changes in the cost of food. So, we are looking in the nearest future at strategies we competent the place that can address some of the most immediate issues related to how poor people are coping with that. And then of course also aware that issue such as climate change has very important implications for people in Bangladesh. And if we look at how climate changes likely to affect the country then we see that we need to be making some preparations both in our rural and urban prorgammes to actually make sure that both government and the people in Bangladesh are in good position to be able to cope with those very significant changes when they come about. So, I think that could also be an area where we will be focusing on in the future.

Interview by: Bushra Rahman