As a grassroots organization by, for, and of poor women, Banchte Shekha is unusual,

As a grassroots organization by, for, and of poor women, Banchte Shekha is unusual, if not unique. Development organizations in Bangladesh are usually founded by the educated elite, and even those targeted at women are most often run by men. Long-time friend and colleague Shahjahan Kabir attributes Gomes' success with Banchte Shekha to fact that she is a village woman herself. "She is one of them," he says. "She lives with them and she speaks their language."
Banchte Shekha embodies Gomes' belief that respect and empowerment begin at home. That means not just in the home, or in the village, but also within the organization. The philosophy of the organization is embodied in the autonomy of group members and groups, as well as by policies such as the requirement that each staff person must do at least one hour of manual labor every day.

Although the leadership of Banchte Shekha is no longer exclusively women, the majority of field positions are still held by experienced women members, and Gomes has made a point of bringing village women up into key positions.

Each of the major programs of Banchte Shekha has grown out of the felt needs of the members. They usually began in an ad hoc fashion.

The legal assistance program, for example, has its origins in early confrontations between members and other villagers, usually husbands. If a man beat his wife, he might find himself surrounded by thirty or forty angry Banchte Shekha women who would gather to publicly denounce him. Often they would make him sign a paper saying that he would not harm his wife again. A man who tried to desert or divorce his wife, or take a second wife, had to contend with Banchte Shekha members who were supported not only by group strength, but a knowledge of the law.

In 1987 Banchte Shekha decided to launch a village-based paralegal program, and, with support from The Asia Foundation, this Legal Aid Cell has become one of the most innovative paralegal programs in the country. It is also the only one run entirely by women.

The volunteer paralegals are village women who receive training in Muslim family law on dowry, the marriage system, legal divorce, and inheritance. These paralegals provide information to members and other villagers about their rights, and they participate in the shalish, the village form of mediation in Bangladesh.

Until recently, women were not represented at a shalish, even when their own future was at stake. Their male relatives were supposed to represent them, and all the decisions were made by the village men. Banchte Shekha's paralegal program has helped change that.

Three hundred and fifty women have been trained so far as paralegals. They work under the direction of one of the earliest Banchte Shekha members, Rokeya Sattar, herself a village woman who was married at thirteen and abandoned at twenty-two with her four children.

The paralegals have proven to be very effective. By July 1991, they had settled 2,119 disputes at the village level and effected 2,382 marriages without dowry. Attorneys who have evaluated the program have been struck by the poise and confidence of the women as they put their cases before the shalish or hold their own in difficult negotiations.

The legal program has been further strengthened by Asia Foundation support that gives the women the money and the clout to say that they will take a case to court and litigate if mediation fails. In the first four years of the program they have won 278 court cases.

The Mother and Child Health Project has its roots in the early days of Banchte Shekha when Gomes would go to hospitals and plead with the nuns to give her free medicine for village children.

Dr. James Ross, a former program officer with the Ford Foundation, says that when Banchte Shekha approached them in 1987 about funding a primary health care program, one of the things that really excited him about the project was their intent to recruit the health care workers from their own membership.

Initially Ford supported the training of nine women as paramedics. Today the program includes not only paid paramedics, but also more than 100 volunteer health workers-village women who teach members about nutrition, safe water and sanitation, family planning, and prenatal and child care. With the support of regional doctors and the paramedics, the health workers provide routine medical services, such as the distribution of vitamin A.

Village midwives are also offered training as traditional birth attendants (TBAs). According to Banchte Shekha program officer Anup Saha, "Before the TBA training, village midwives followed traditional practices, such as witholding food from the mother and the baby after the delivery. We teach them how to manage a normal delivery and ensure breast feeding, and we provide medical support and advice if they need it." Some 200 women have completed the TBA training.

The Ford Foundation has also capitalized a revolving loan fund that helps women get started with income-generating projects. A woman may request fingerling grass carp, for example, and, after she raises and sells the fish, she repays Banchte Shekha in taka.

Funds generated in this way have been used for a variety of projects, including the purchase of the organization's compound and demonstration farm in Jessore.

The demonstration farm is an important center for training in environmentally sound agricultural methods and income-generating activities. Produce from the farm feeds the staff and as many as 120 women a day who come there for training and refuge.

The manager of the farm is Manowara "Dolly" Begum. An illiterate woman who was divorced when her family could not meet her husband's demands for dowry, she came to Gomes and said she would do anything if she could stay at the Banchte Shekha compound. Gomes trained her to help take care of the cows, and she has now risen to a management position and runs the livestock breeding and production program.

"She is an illiterate woman, but she is educated," says Gomes emphatically. "She can take care of herself. The money she brings in from the farm pays the salaries of the professional staff here."

Farm profits from crops such as fodder also fund scholarships for village girls to attend secondary school and college.

Gomes is particularly proud of this next generation. "They are the ones who will become our leaders," she says. "The mothers, they can only go so far because of the disadvantages of their lives. But their children can do anything now."

In the spring of 1994, Gomes realized another goal: the opening of Banchte Shekha's own training center at the compound in Jessore. In a country where a tin roof is a status symbol, this complex of two-story brick buildings rising out of the red mud is a dramatic illustration of how far Banchte Shekha has come.

Funded by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), the new center will not only serve members, but will also provide a place where representatives from government and other organizations can learn what has made Banchte Shekha a success.

Operating a facility of this size-and the budget it requires-has necessitated some changes. In the past year the staff has increased by twenty-five percent to 261 people. Now, in addition to the group organizers, there are field supervisors and area managers who oversee all the activities in a specific geographic area. At the compound there are college-educated, English-speaking accountants and lawyers and secretaries putting in their one-hour-a-day of manual labor alongside trainees from the villages and the older staff.

Despite its rapid growth and the inevitable expansion of management-and management problems-Banchte Shekha remains true to Gomes' original vision.

"What's important to me is that Banchte Shekha is a movement, more than just a development project," says Nick Langton, the Asia Foundation's representative in Bangladesh. "It existed before any funders came along, and it would continue to exist-although on a smaller scale-without us. If you go out and talk to women in these groups, you get a very definite sense that they have been empowered, that they are women making decisions who would not have been making decisions before."

NORAD's Reidar Kvam agrees. He sees Banchte Shekha as a successful working model for other groups.

"This is an example of what woman leaders can achieve in this country," he says. "I think they have been able to demonstrate to a larger audience that there are strong, capable woman leaders here, and that they are addressing issues of concern with an impact even beyond their target organization."

Gomes hopes Banchte Shekha will continue to grow and that other organizations will learn from their experience.

"We have never claimed that this is the only approach to development," she says. "Certainly there may be other ways. The problems of poor women in Bangladesh have been centuries in the making. By comparision, eighteen years is not a long time. But every day is a new day. We have to be creative to cope with the changes it brings."