Circles of 60 village mothers formed their own food security and mother and infant health services

Basic foods needed for infants first 1000 days and mothering of infants:

Water boiled or filtered

Milk

Rice

Veggies eg carrots

Chickens

Notes – rice is one of the most convenient foods ( because its least perishable)

China and Bangladesh having started tens of millions of people –focused on innovating rice science round varieties for every local condition

However rice doesnt have vitamins- which is why infants get night blindness if they don’t get vegetables as well as risce. The first 1000 days of infanthood are critical- not only for life but for brain and body development

Milk is a difficult product unless it drink it fresh straight away- options for milk products are powereded mil, evaporated ,milk, yogurt/cheese (but the last two alos introduce chilled distribution problems)

Given the above dynamics, the bottom-up idea that Bangladesh invented and massively scaled :

Assemble circles of 60 mothers as micro farmers markets- first make sure that enough mothers worked on foods needed to secure diets for all 60 families; also maximize how the women helped each other with basic child care and health services such as oral rehydration.

Next question: what to export beyond the community circle so that community sustained positive trade flows. Out of Bangladesh villages, BRAC found 2 solutions. It brfed a hen that layed many times more eggs than previous village hens. This created hundreds of thousands of jobs as villagers had lots of eggs to export out of their community. Indee Brac’s village women networks became the market elader in egg production for the whole country.

Parallel question : what to import first where multiple circles could pool together to buy something? BRAC tried China’s barefoot doctors movement but found that qualified medical professionals didn’t want to live in village communities. So the idea of para-health workers emerged. These did not have years of medical training but they focvused on all the main nutritional and day to day health needs of mothers and infants. This became the start of developing a rural village health service paid for entirely out of village mothers earnings

Powdered milk became the answer for the other export market but BRAC had to time this carefully. For many years the Europena Union was producing a glut of powdered milk. Only when this stopped could BRAC make a market out of villagers milk production

Apart from loan sharks, village mothers had never seen any finacvial services – neither credit, nor savings, nor insurance. Vilage circles banking for the poor emerged

Put together all of the above provided a developing model economy (sustainable microfranchsied busienses) exactly the opposite of top down charity. It all depended on trust – most of all barefoot bankers living in the villages

There were however two main needs for aid – disaster relief, and childrens education. Fortunately BRAC demonstrated the most affirdabkle and effective and trusted bottom-up services in tese arfeas. These were largely funded by British Aid – ultimately it was the British who had been the most responsible for the condition the new nation of Bnagladesh started in 1971 as well as beking where Sir Fazle Abed graduated and originally had been employed by the Shell Coropration. Even with aid BRAC streamlined innovations such as econdary scholarships – now regarded as one of the first ever applicatuions of conditional cash transfer

This brings us to the year 2000. Bangladesh had become known as te open university of microcredit and micro-everything. Its expatriate networks made sure it had te first opportunities to experiment with both mobile telecoms and microsolar. The fjurst 2 decades of the 21^st centirty cpuld have seen the greatest leapfrogoing model of mobile and grte4en energy girls empowerment. In Bangladesh there is a chance that they stil are. Pretty much everywhere else that had started experiemntsing with grassroirs network ing to end vaileg poverty has nobt been so fortunate. Prteety evil busoienss schools have IPO’s the original banking models for te poor so they are no longer owned in trust for the poorest. As it turned out only BRAC’s model had become so well connected that truly the world’s poorest girls sustained development of the 8^th moist populous nation

WHATS NEXT

Note miraculous as Bangladeh’s bottom up development has been its digital foundations remain mainly text based mobiles and it simly doesn’t have a wealthy doiaspora like the chiense had to invest in the sort of 21^st C infrastructure of roads and trains and ports that China assumes 21^st C small enterprise markets will linkin. In many ways Bangladesh is the most effiecent laboratory imaginable for the poorest village part of the Indian subcontinebnt. But will it see enough coding wizards to ensure its bottom up investment economy and brilliantly jobs-focuesed education systems continue to develop the way girl empowerment deserves