RDRS Bangladesh and its Union Federation, Empowering the Rural Poor

Abstract

On the basis of three months internship period, this report has been prepared. During this internship program, I have learned so many things and also gathered practical knowledge of how Non-Governmental Organizations, NGO’s works and how they are operating their activities. I have come to know that, developing the rural poor, the biggest contribution is NGO’s. In northern part of Bangladesh, RDRS Bangladesh is running their activities since after the liberation war of Bangladesh. To lift up the broken economy and the people how could not stay at their home during liberation war, RDRS Bangladesh has started their journey. After nine months long war, it creates many damages in Bangladesh named west Bengal that time. About 3 million dead, 30 million destitute, 10 million refugees and thousands of raped women, orphaned children. For them, being survived was dependent on food, cloths, shelter and daily survival medicines which were supplied from near friend country India and also from abroad. For some of those refugees who came from Rangpur and Dinajpur district, north Bengal of Bangladesh, relief was found more than 20 camps run by the Cooch Behar Refugee Service (CBRS), a voluntary organization, which was set up in the mid 60’s to lift up the economic damage by providing them their fundamental needs and empowering the rural poor. Under the supervision of Norwegian organization, Olav Hodne, the first director of Lutheran World Service (LWS) started working in the north Bengal of Bangladesh. When people able to came in Bangladesh, CBRS came with them with a new brand name called RDRS (Rangpur Dinajpur Rural Service) Bangladesh and started their journey. In this report, I have tried to mention all the facilities that our organization provide to the rural poor since the beginning. I have travelled some of their working areas and collected data for further analysis. To make a sustainable path, RDRS created Union Federation who are working for the rural people from the grass root level. To achieve this goal, we developed community based organization CBO's. Those can help our company to meet with our vision. We basically use micro finance strategy in the rural areas where people used to survive on agriculture and domestic animals. Their businesses are basically called micro enterprises. They borrow small amount of loan from union federation provided by RDRS and after e certain period, they deposit some amount of money according to their capabilities. During my internship period, I have found that, those small Union federations have some issues in their working strategy. Communication gap and monitoring are the most alarming weakness in those areas. As Bangladesh is a developing country, so grass root people have much significance in our economy also in the country’s GDP Growth. During investigation and research, findings have some significance that allow us to develop our strategies for better quality and service.