OfPEvery OfP programme starts the same way — with a conversation. We bring the community together: farmers, students, teachers, women and men, local officials, and, on occasion, a member of parliament alongside our international advisers. Out of those discussions we draw the themes and focus areas that shape what we do next.
In March 2014, OfP held a Community Dialogue on Local Economic Development at the Balagram Union Parishad complex in Jaldhaka. Founding Chairman Md. Rabiul Islam presided, with Professor Golam Mostafa, Member of Parliament, as chief guest and Balagram Union Chairman Md. Abdul Hai as guest of honour. International advisers — Professor Alex Berland of the University of British Columbia, Professor John Richards of Simon Fraser University, and Dr Karen Lund of IUBAT's College of Nursing — joined farmers and civil-society members who shared the economic problems they faced and the solutions they hoped for.
The dialogue named the priorities for this corner of the famine-affected Rangpur region: education, health services, food and nutrition, technical education, and the chance to start small enterprises — cattle fattening, poultry and duck farming — together with access to affordable finance, safe water and electricity. Afterwards the guests laid the foundation for OfP's Food Security Project and visited the free outreach school, the computer-literacy centre and the fish farms.
A year later, in February 2015, a second dialogue took up the Right to Information. Adviser Drs Sigfried Janzing explained Bangladesh's RTI law and why access to public information matters — that it can improve services, ease everyday hardship and help curb corruption. Many participants said they had never known these rights existed. He suggested training a small group of young women and men to become the community's first RTI awareness trainers.
These conversations are not a formality. They are how we make sure the work that follows belongs to the community — not to us.