Community Empowerment: Strengthening Local Governance

Our initiative to strengthen local government institutions started in 2003 with an aim to strengthen local governance towards the benefit of the rural poor. It aims to develop capacity of local government towards pro-poor governance, higher accountability and transparency. In addition it aims to strengthen grassroots democracy and local governance, and create platform for rural civil society and local government to work together to meet local development challenges. Since the local government election in 2003, we have provided capacity building support and gender sensitization to a total of 20,012 men and  women Union Parishad members and Chairman in the country.

Activities under this initiative involve capacity development of Union Parishad (UP) representatives, addressing gender inequality within the UP, organising female UP representatives through Upazila Forums and strengthening linkage between the local government and the community. These interventions contribute in improving local governance for effective delivery of public services, promoting accountability and transparency, and strengthening female leadership within the local government structure.

Active Citizens and Accountable Local Government:
The Active Citizens and Accountable Local Government project (ACALG) project focuses on building a sustainable social accountability mechanism through citizen’s participation, capacity development of local government representatives, improved interfacing between the community and the local government, and media reporting. Union Parishad monitoring and evaluating performance of the Union Parishads by the community is a unique feature of the project which is a comparatively new approach in Bangladesh.

In 2011, BRAC received the Certification of Merit award at the IFTDO (The International Federation of Training & Development Organizations) Global Award 2011 for the Active Citizens and Accountable Local Government project (ACALG) project.   

Achieving MDGs at the Union Level:
CEP is piloting a project in partnership with The Hunger Project Bangladesh to test successful approaches towards creating environment for achieving MDGs at the union level through social mobilisation and improved local governance.