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The contents of this study tour were more diverse than I expected and everything was new to me. (Therefore, it was hard to digest what I saw and heard during the tour.) We visited various NGOs and government related offices and I was trying to find something to learn from them.
Here are three impressive things during this tour.
The first thing is the number and the scale of NGOs. So many NGOs are established and they are so large that they are giving a big impact on the society. The Grameen Bank, which is famous for a micro-credit program*, followed by BRAC and BARD, help women become independent and work their way out of poverty in the entire region of this country. Although those organizations receive support from the government, it is astonishing that the Grameen Bank, a NGO, is the biggest financial institution in Bangladesh and NGO can become financially big and stable. NGOs in Japan are considered just volunteer organizations and this is a very different point between the two countries.
The second thing that impressed me is the vitality of this country. Various activities including NGOsf are so successful that Bangladesh is often refereed to an ghonor student of development.h It is often said, especially among ODA talks in Japan that the people who are receiving help tend to rely on being helped. However, each group of people we visited was eager to tackle problems with their own efforts. Japan should learn from this.
The third point is the issue of gender, which is my homework. The support for women in Bangladesh is larger than in other Islamic countries, but it was far from the stage where women can become independent. Very few women are seen on the street and many of them, especially in rural areas, cannot even write their own names.
The situation for women in Bangladesh has been improved by the effort of people, but there are still some serious problems to be solved, such as education and marriage (partners are chosen by their parents). In Japan, women receive high education, but once they graduate from high school or university, they face the reality of a male-dominant society, which is typically seen in big companies. Some women give up certain things before they even start because of the gender issue. How can we say Japan is an advanced country if we could not conquer this problem? The micro-credit programs or other programs run by women seen in this study tour may not be applied for the Japanese society but we can learn from the way they tackle the gender problems.
Conclusion:
Japanese people should watch not only advanced nations, but also developing countries with an international point of view to make an effort to understand their conditions. Our hands should not be full just with ourselves. "Do good: thou doest it for thyself." Helping others would help us as well.
* The program in which people, usually women in poverty living in rural areas, are granted small, collateral-free loans for use in incoming-generating activities