Community Health Intervention: Maternal and Infant Mortality Rate Exceed MDG Target: 29 January 2011
Maternal mortality rate has come down to 141 per 100,000 live births in the slum areas of six city corporations whereas the MDG target was 143 by 2010. Moreover, infant mortality rate has also come miraculously down to 13 per 1000 live births as against the MDG target of 25 for the same period.
This was disclosed at a special meeting held on 29 January, 2011 to present evidences of impact of a community based health initiative undertaken by BRAC in 2007 with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The major lesson of the 4-year intervention is that maternal and neonatal mortality could be reduced promptly if skilled birth attendance and comprehensive emergency obstetric care are ensured. The initiative has also been able to achieve increased hospital deliveries with a major decline in home births from 86% to 20% in the intervention areas.
Evaluation of Training and Advocacy: 27 December 2010
An independent team formed to evaluate the impact of the Training and the Advocacy programs of the NGO Federation undertaken with the financial assistance of the Aga Khan Foundation submitted its report on 27 December 2010. The team tried to measure the outcome of the first six months of training courses carried out from January to June 2009 for enhancing the capacity of the small NGOs. Moreover, since the performance, transparency and accountability of NGOs are being questioned by some quarters including a section of the civil society, the Federation has also organized advocacy workshops in Dhaka and at the district level to discuss many different linkage mechanisms with the government officials, the civil society and the NGOs.
During field visits in September and October 2010, the two-member team met and interviewed a cross-section of people from 25 districts including government officials, civil society members, media and representatives who had participated in the Roundtables, and the NGO heads/staff members who had joined the training courses. (No representative from the Central Office of the Federation, was present during such meetings/interviews).
The team made an assessment of how FNB has conducted the training courses and produced results and the courses have been used by the training receivers in their work. According to the Report, the curricula and module for each of the courses, written in simple Bengali, has become the wealth of FNB. The report commented that the Federation “skillfully mobilized” a panel of qualified and experienced trainers from different disciplines who competently demonstrated their knowledge tools for their programs. The design of ‘Group Formation and Microfinance Management’ course has been found to be quite extensive and very methodical. It was suggested by the trainees that more time should be added as three days are not enough to absorb the learning’s. Referring to the Role of Board Members the report is of the opinion that they (Board members) are now well conversant with NGO governance and management system better than before and they are now playing their due role to ensure good governance. The inclusion of ‘Monitoring, Evaluation and Report Writing’ in the training is very significant since small NGOs have problems in developing and using monitoring mechanism. The participants said that they have now the knowledge is differentiating ‘supervision’ and ‘monitoring’. It was, however, noted that their capacity to write report independently is limited. It has also been felt that more care should be taken in selecting the right staff for this advanced course.
The report suggested that inclusion of Directors and staff members in the same class should be avoided as this was found a little inconvenient considering the differences in their levels of education, position and understanding capability.
About the advocacy program, the report observed that the advocacy and communication workshops at district level have impacted enhancing relationship with government agencies. The civil society members in some districts said that the NGOs have been facing image crisis with regard to transparency and accountability. It was felt that these advocacy and communication workshops can create an impact to some degree to establish an active relationship between GO and NGO and was very effective in order to develop cooperation between the Government officials and the NGOs. The district authorities and the civil society members appreciated the endeavour of FNB to establish a correlation with them. They were of the opinion that the Roundtables have a positive impact in allaying misgivings and reducing misunderstanding about NGO activities which will definitely help enhance public perception and transparency of the NGOs. The local level small NGOs need the support of these civil society actors for greater interest of the society. Such programs, they suggested, should be continued in future with issue based seminars/like HIV/AIDS, climate change, eve-teasing, etc.