This toolkit is designed to provide you with all the materials you and your neighbors need to achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — an agenda of 17 goals to “transform our world.” The Government of Bangladesh committed to achieve these goals in 2015.

Organization: This kit is organized in four major sections:

• Start Here: this contains background information you need to understand the “big picture” of localizing the SDGs based on the successful experience of The Hunger Project’s “SDG Union Strategy.”
• Leadership: the training and workshop material to develop the capacity of both the government and civil society actors in each village, ward, union and upazila.
• Structures: the workshop materials to organize the new partnerships and teams necessary for a successful “whole of society” effort to achieve the SDGs.
• Action: the milestone events in the annual cycle of planning and action for driving progress.

Background

During the period of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs, 2000-2015), Bangladesh achieved “remarkable progresses in the areas of poverty alleviation, ensuring food security, primary school enrolment, gender parity in primary and secondary level education, lowering the infant and under-five mortality rate and maternal mortality ratio, improving immunization coverage; and reducing the incidence of communicable diseases” (UNDP, 2015). Such achievements are largely attributable to the resilience and creativity of the Bangladeshi people in finding innovative and low cost solutions and empowering individual “agency,” especially of women (Mahmud, Asadullah & Savoia, 2013).

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are more ambitious and will be more challenging to achieve. In addition, Bangladesh faces many daunting challenges, including climate change, automation, corruption, governance failures, institutional weaknesses, confrontational politics and growing violence which threaten its future progress. Thus, for achieving SDGs, institutions will have to function, communities will have to work together, peace and justice will have to prevail, governance will have to improve and environmental sustainability will have to be ensured.

Why “localize” the SDGs?

Although primary accountability for the SDGs belongs to nations, the SDGs explicitly call for action by local authorities. At least 12 of the 17 SDGs – all excepting9, 12, 13, 14 and 17 – require integrated strategies at the community level to overcome the interlinked challenges of poverty, ill-health, social ills, poor governance and environmental destruction. Fortunately, Bangladesh’s constitution wisely placed key responsibilities for social and economic development, including “the preparation and implementation of plans relating to public services and economic development” at the level closest to the people,” with the local government bodies, particularly the Union Parishad (UP), the body at the doorstep of the people (Constitution of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, 1971, Article 59(2)(C)).

This constitutional mandate makes it imperative that Bangladesh localize the SDGs – that is, it must equip the UPs with the skills and resources to analyze their local situation, set priorities for each of the relevant SDGs, and track and report their progress.

The Local Government (UP) Act of 2009 strengthens local government by incorporating global best practices for direct participation by active citizens in planning and social accountability, through ward shava for participatory planning, citizen charter, open budget meetings and annual reporting.

SDG 16 – the goal that makes all goals possible – explicitly calls for “peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels” (which includes the community level). Target 16.7 is to “ensure responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making at all levels.” Goal 16 is therefore the crown-jewel of the SDGs and the achievement of other goals depends on it.

SDG Target 16.7 requires citizen voice in decision making, which for most citizens can only effectively happen at the UP and village levels. (Coonrod, 2016).

Achieving SDGs in light of SDG 16

The Hunger Project-Bangladesh (THP), which played a role in pioneering the reforms incorporated in the 2009 UP Act, has set itself the task of working in partnership with local government to develop a package of community mobilization and capacity-building interventions known as the “SDG Union Strategy” to demonstrate how fully implementing the Act can achieve the SDGs. THP has been demonstrating the working of this innovative model in 185 Unions, 61 of which are supported by BRAC, as a low-cost and sustainable means of achieving SDGs.

The SDG Union Strategy calls for a partnership between: (1) the people, (2) their elected representatives at the local level, (3) a civil society created from the ground up, and (4) the government functionaries responsible for delivering services to the grassroots. These stakeholders are brought together by a shared vision to achieve SDGs at the Union level.

Role of the people. People in SDG Unions, including women and youth, are awakened and mobilized to make them active as citizens and take action to achieve SDGs. Mobilization of people creates “social capital,” which can make up for lack of “financial capital,” and can be used for solving many social problems through social movements and social resistance. Community members carry out various campaigns to combat social ills such as child marriage, violence against women, substance abuse, and environmental degradation. Using the Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology, the poorest of the poor are also mobilized to become “barefoot researchers” to identify the causes of their poverty, form “self-help groups” and take other action necessary to end their own hunger and poverty. Mobilization of the poor is designed to ensure that no one is left behind, which is an inspiring aspiration of SDGG.

Role of the UP representatives. UP representatives, receiving both statutory and transformational training, provide catalytic leadership not only to mobilize people, but also to ensure that the services people are entitled to actually reach them. UPs belonging to the SDG Unions sign an MoU to make the achievement of SDGS their priority, make the entire UP body functional, make standing committees effective and ensure social justice. The UP works in partnership with the citizens to hold Ward Shavas, Open Budget Meetings and prepare Five-Year Plans.

Role of the local civil society. Civil society is built up at the Union level, and consists of approximately 150 trained volunteers, including Animators, Women Leaders, Youth Leaders, PAR facilitators, champions for good governance and Peace Ambassadors. The members of the civil society on the one hand act as watchdog over the UPs and at the same time work in partnership with them. They also empower and mobilize the community members to ensure inclusivity and arrange skills training to help them become authors of their own future.

Role of the government functionaries. Local level government functionaries work with the community members to give them access to the available government services, make those services affordable and deliver those with accountability so that an “enabling environment” is created for people to succeed (THP, 1994).

These four stakeholders, working together, constitute a Community-led Development Approach to achieve the SDGs (Coonrod, 2016). A recent study by four professors of Columbia, Princeton and Cambridge Universities, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, found that “community trust,” created through this approach in our working area, positively affect the poor’s economic decision making and thereby their poverty (Jachimowicz, Chafik, Munrat, Prabhu, & Weber, 2017). In addition to achieving better lives, one unique contribution of this “whole society” approach is peace at the local level since people working together transcend their differences and diminish conflicts (Majumdar, 2014).

Process of creating an SDG Union

The work of creating an SDG Union begins through transforming the mindset. For the citizens of Bangladesh who live in conditions of poverty, meaningful participation in decision-making seems like an impossible dream. For government functionaries operating within highly centralized, top-down ministries, the concept of direct accountability to citizens seems like an impractical nuisance. However, countries that have successfully implemented bottom-up planning and social accountability have found that it must begin with a profound shift in mindset of both functionaries and residents, from “benefactor/beneficiary” to “public servant/active citizen.” To achieve this, the SDG Union Strategy begins with a “Vision, Commitment and Action” workshop and the training of approximately 150 grassroots volunteer animators and other volunteers in each Union committed and skilled in facilitating bottom-up development.

Village Development Committees – Building Civil Society from the Bottom Up. Exercising citizen voice is a collective process; active citizens from each segment of society (women, youth, the ultra-poor) must form community-based self-help groups to make their voices heard, and must work together to put forward a concise set of shared priorities. In addition to the body of Animators, the SDG Union Strategy trains Women Leaders, Youth Leaders, champions of good governance and girl’s rights, and PAR facilitators who create groups among the ultra-poor. The leaders of each of these village groups meet together as a Village Development Committee (VDC) to coordinate activities.

Transforming Gender Relations. The SDG principle of “No One Left Behind” has special meaning in rural Bangladesh, where adolescent girls and women often are not permitted to participate in public life. Trained Women Leaders from the village therefore organize “court yard” meetings where all family members can participate and discuss sensitive issues, such as halting domestic violence including child marriage, keeping girls in school, good nutrition and other human rights.

Active Partnership with Local Government. UP representatives and functionaries participate in a five-day training that both transforms their mindset and provides them with statutory information, especially on implementing the bottom-up reforms of the 2009 UP Act. Based on this new approach, the UP:

• Works in partnership with the VDCs to mobilize participation in Ward Shava for generating awareness of service standards under the Citizen Charter, and setting local priorities.
• Makes Standing Committees Functional by including trained volunteers and other interested citizens.
• Develops and publishes a 5-year plan based on ward shava input.
• Launches mass action campaigns to achieve goals in the plan.
• Reports annually through Open Budget Meetings and on progress on the plan.

Sustaining Peace and Social Harmony. The recent rise in violence, often exploiting religious and ethnic differences in hopes of partisan gains, is one of the greatest threats to progress on all the SDGs, and is central to SDG 16. For this reason, the SDG Union Strategy has begun creating Peace Facilitator Groups and training local Peace Ambassadors who can analyze the local situation and carry out actions that promote peace and social harmony. The Peace Ambassadors and other volunteers lead Citizenship and Social Harmony workshops to promote civic rights and responsibilities and peace at the local level. In 10 Upazilas, this process has resulted in the three major parties signing a Code of Conduct for peaceful resolution of any differences, collective action to halt violent extremism and promote pluralism to address identity-based prejudice.