Functions of The Academy :
 Research in rural development and allied fields
Training of Government officials and others concerned with Rural Development
Test and experimentation on concepts and theories of development
Evaluation of the programmes and activities relating to Rural Development
Providing advisory and consultative service to the government and other agencies
Guiding and supervising national and foreign students in their dissertation works
Conducting national and international seminars, conferences and workshops
Helping policy planners in the field of Rural Development
Research The Academy has been conducting socio-economic research since its inception. Research findings are used as both training materials by the Academy itself and information materials by the Ministries, Planning Commission and policy makers for drawing up development programs. In some particular cases, these are also circulated among the international agencies and institutions. The total number of completed researches till June 2005 is 670.
Over time the Academy has also expanded international contact and undertaken collaborative research with various development organizations. During last 45 years Michigan State University, Harvard University, Gottingen University, Bath University, Upsala University, Kyoto University, Population Council, ICOMP, APDC, FAO, UNDP, UNESCO and CIRDAP have become the major international research collaborators. BARD is very closely linked with the Center for Integrated Rural Development for Asia and the Pacific (CIRDAP) and acts as its National IRD Centre for Bangladesh. It is also working as the National Liaison Center for SAARC in the field of rural development.
The BARD faculty have a wide range of experience in the field of research, training and action research. On an average, every faculty member has 9 research publications. In addition to self-sponsored studies, every year BARD conducts a commendable number of researches sponsored by GOs, NGOs and international agencies. The Academy with a multi-disciplinary faculty has gained the capacity to conduct multi-dimensional studies on rural development and welcomes requests to conduct studies from any agency - national or international. Requests for conducting studies are to be made to Director General, BARD, Kotbari, Comilla-3503, Bangladesh. Research Publications are available at the Publication Section of BARD.
Training
The Academy is a designated national training institute. Its training clientele includes both officials and non-officials. Officials comprise of civil servants and officers of nation building departments while the non-officials are local councilors, local leaders, and member of co-operatives, students of educational institutions and members of voluntary organizations. Besides, a large number of international clientele including students, scholars, consultants, government officials, members of diplomatic corps and international agencies visit the Academy.
A unified approach of research, training and experimentation to solve the problems of rural development has given special significance to the role of the Academy as a training institution. Because of this specialty BARD continues to attract trainees from different government agencies, local level organizations and non-government organizations (NGOs) as well as trainees, observers and visitors from abroad. During the period from 1959 to June 2005 a total of 1,90,416 trainees and visitors attended various programmes offered and conducted by the Academy.
BARD has accumulated vast experience in the field of training. Every year BARD organizes 150 training courses on an average. It has also developed 30 training modules under the broad category of rural development. Various groups of national and international clientele have already participated in training courses on these modules. These courses are offered on request with a reasonable budget. Requests for organizing training courses are to be made to Director General, BARD, Kotbari, Comilla-3503, Bangladesh.
Title of the Training Courses:
• Advanced Training of Trainers (TOT) (2 Weeks)
• Training of Trainers (TOT) (1 Week)
• Socio-Economic Research Methodology for Rural Development (3 Weeks)
• Development Communication (1 Week)
• Team Building, Leadership Development and Mind-set Change (1 Week)
• Mainstreaming Gender in Development Planning (3 Weeks)
• Reproductive Health Rights, HIV and AIDS (1 Week)
• Gender and Development (1 Week)
• Irrigation Management and Land Use Development Planning (2 Weeks)
• Environmental Impact Assessment of Rural Development Projects (2 Weeks)
• Disaster and Environment Management (1 Week)
• Entrepreneurship Development (1 Week)
• Participatory Rural Development (1 Week)
• Rural Finance and Credit Management (1 Week)
• Development Project Planning and Management (2 Weeks)
• Monitoring and Evaluation of Poverty Focused Rural Development Programme (2 weeks)
• Project Planning, Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation (2 Weeks)
• Planning with the People for Sustainable Poverty Alleviation (3 Weeks)
• Food and Nutrition Programme Planning and Management (1 Week)
Action Research The Academy is continuously searching out new models of rural development. Therefore, it is conducting experiments in different areas. Some of these are:
1. Women's Education, Income and Nutrition Improvement (WEINI) Project
Since 1962, women in the Comilla villages are being organised in cooperatives so that they can get the facilities of training and services on capital formation, credit operation, kitchen gardening, knitting and sewing and other income generating activities. Based on this experience such programmes are now being implemented by BRDB and many other government and non-government organisations. 4. Developing a Regular Local Level Poverty Monitoring System (LLPMS) in Bangladesh
Under MIMAP-Bangladesh, the Poverty Monitoring System developed and tested the methodology and the indicators for a local level poverty monitoring system (LLPMS). The experimentation was carried out by BARD in consultation with the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS). The pilot testing was kept limited to one ward under Sreepur Union, Chauddagram Upazila of Comilla, to acquire the required insights prior to its wider replication. On the basis of successful outcomes of the experimental phase, this phase intends to cover all villages within an entire Union of Muhammadpur (West) under Daudkhandi Upazila of Comilla District to see its effectiveness at Union level. This phase of the research is being carried out under the auspices of International Development Research Centre (IDRC) through Community Based Monitoring System (CBMS) Network, Philippines. 5. Technical Cooperative activity to improve sanitation at rural area in Bangladesh focusing on dissemination and awareness raising.
Background with Rationality:
Every human in the world is firmly determined to lead a decent and comfortable life. For maintaining life comfortably and congenially, healthy environment is necessary. Actually humans are the progeny of environment. Environmental problems in the country especially the rural areas of Bangladesh are getting worse by the day. Inadequate facilities of disposal of human excreta or the traditional way of human excreta management are the great concern of environmental sanitation. Considering these problems of human excreta management Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development (BARD), Comilla and Japan Association of Drainage and Environment (JADE), Japan jointly initiated this project at four Comprehensive Village Development Programme (CVDP) villages with the financial assistance of Japan Fund for Global Environment (JFGE).
Project Duration: November 2004- September 2005
Project Cost: 15,00,000 (Fifteen Hundred Thousand Only)
Project Location: Four (4) CVDP Villages which are Hatigara, Raicho, Joypur (North) and Joypur (South)
Project Objectives:
• General Objective: The general objective of the project is to evolve a model of eco-village in the rural areas of Bangladesh addressing the major environmental problems.
• Specific Objectives:
- To construct toilets at household levels in four CVDP villages.
- To conduct the soil and water quality survey in project areas.
- To arrange a questionnaire survey on local people's consciousness on sanitation
- To aware the toilet owners regarding the use of toilets and the utilization of human excreta in agricultural land.
- To monitor the use of toilets by the appropriate authority.
Major Components:
• Motivational activities to use different kinds of toilets and use human excreta as fertilizer.
• Construction of toilets
• Questionnaire survey (Baseline survey)
• Soil and water quality survey of the toilet sites (Baseline survey)
• Organization of training workshop regarding the use of toilets and other environmental issues.
• On-site coordination.
Implementation Strategy
In this pilot testing 15 toilets were constructed in four CVDP villages and these toilets are totally different than any other toilet using by the villagers. Earlier People were not accustomed to use this type of toilets and they were not familiar with the use of human excreta and urine as fertilizer for farming. After some motivational activities like workshops, group discussions etc. people were interested to construct these toilets in their homestead areas and they accepted it to use as their own. Until now the toilets are using very much appropriately and the beneficiaries started to using urine in home gardening. Nearly all the households of these villages are interested to have this type of toilet in their house. But, the construction cost for each toilet was nearly taka 35,000. So, it is not financially feasible to the villagers to construct this type of costly toilets. Considering this issue the project personnel of both BARD and JADE discussed and finalized that the technologically same but low cost (approximately taka 15,000) toilet can be designed and constructed.
In a workshop conducted at BARD (7 th May 2005), the toilet owners and the villagers recommended that if the construction cost will be lower (nearly 12,000-15,000) then the toilet owner can share at least 20% of the toilet construction cost.
Lesson Learnt:
• Construction cost should be reachable for the poor people and technical side should be followed as before.
• All the households of the project areas should be given this type of toilets.
• Farmers should be given priority for choosing the toilet owners.
• Size of the toilets should be smaller or bigger as per number of household members or toilet users.
Future Plan:
In addition to toilet construction and sanitation improvement some other measures should be undertaken to make an eco -village development programme. These measures are mainly:
• Household waste management
• Solid waste management
• Home hygiene management
• Natural resource management
• Garbage management
• Eco-school programme
• Organic farming
All these measures are interrelated and should be addressed comprehensively. Small-scale efforts are inadequate to address these problems. Large-scale measures, therefore, should be undertaken like awareness raising not only for the beneficiaries but also for the policy makers and an international workshop may be organized. Inter-country visit programme may be organized and by the way people will motivate to evolve eco-village model. This would be the first step for achieving sanitation for all by the year 2010 as declared by the government of Bangladesh.
The general objective of the project is to evolve a model of eco-village in the rural areas of Bangladesh addressing the major environmental problems. But now JADE and BARD are not such a position to continue the project largely to evolve a model of eco-village due to financial obligations. In this regard BARD and JADE wants to continue this work with the financial assistance of JICA.
6. Experimental Projects of BARD 1960 – 2005
* 1. Rural Works Programme
*2. Thana Training and Development Center
*3. Thana Irrigation Programme
*4. Two-tier Cooperatives
**5. Family Planning
**6. Adult Education
**7. Village Publicity
**8. Women's Development
**9. Rural Health and Nutrition
**10. Village Child Development Programme
**11. Feeder School and Imam Teachers Programme
**12. Mechanised Cultivation
**13. Marketing, Processing and Storage
14. Poultry and Dairy
**15. Rural Electrification
16. Mechanical Rice Drying
17. Reclamation of Derelict Tanks
18. Youth Programme
• Land Use Development Planning
• Kitchen Gardening and Home Level Food Processing
**21. Small Farmers and Landless Labourers Development Programme (SFDP)
**22. Joint Study on Rural development Experiment
**23. Comprehensive Village Development Programme (CVDP)
• Local Level Planning and Management
• Village School and Community Learning
• Community Information and Planning System
• Building Capacity for Local Governance
• One House One Farm
29 Model Village in Rural Development
* These Programmes have been accepted for replication all over the country.
** These programmes have been accepted for replication partially or in other form in some selected areas of the country by the government or other agencies.
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