"The switch has already been made."

My first photos! The view from BRAC headquarters, from L to R: urban slum dwellers take canoes to the city; the largest mosque in Dhaka; a rickshaw "parking lot."

At last! My eyes glazed over from travel, I boarded Etihad Airlines in Abu Dhabi on the third and final leg of my 26-hour journey from Boston to Dhaka. After finding my seat, I stowed away my carry-on and shot off to the back of the plane for a pre-flight bathroom break. But first I took note of my seatmate: An older Bangladeshi man with a bright white beard, in a full white robe and his head wrapped in white cloth. As my blue American eyes met several inquisitive brown Bangladeshi eyes on this walk through the plane, it struck me that I was on the verge of entering an entirely different world. I anticipated interactions with people whose clothing was merely an indicator of the vastly different worlds we occupied – culturally, economically, socially.

On my way back, I wondered if this seemingly wise elder spoke English. Probably a few words, I decided, and I could use my handy new Bengali-English dictionary when we hit an impasse. What advice could he pass on to me? Would he be able to tell me where to visit in the winding streets of Old Dhaka? What were his thoughts on BRAC, the NGO (non-governmental organization) I was about to spend the next two months with as an intern?

But by the time I returned to Seat 25A, he was no longer there. Instead, another man was helping a young mother with her infant daughter into the seat next to me. Confused, but thinking that maybe this game of musical chairs took place so that this young woman could sit near her husband, I offered up my sit to him so they could sit together. He assured me that “the switch has already been made” and I quickly realized the elderly man whom I had imagined would take me under his wing in these last hours before arriving in Bangladesh had requested the switch and found an appropriate individual – a woman – to sit next to me.

It had occurred to me in the waiting area that there were few women on this flight – which departed at nearly two in the morning – and now one of these women had been sought out to sit with me, a modern Western woman who may or may not be religious, respectful, married, or a number of other things. Maybe he felt uncomfortable, maybe he was concerned for my own comfort level, or maybe it was simply culturally inappropriate for us to sit next to one another. It was likely a combination of these factors, but I couldn’t be sure: His eyes wouldn’t meet mine, and her English was nearly as limited as my Bengali. All I was able to learn from her was her name (Mahmouda), and that she was married (I would come to learn that her nose ring gave that status away), she had two other children, her husband was working in Italy, and she preferred fish over chicken. With that, off we went to Dhaka.

Given that Harvard Kennedy School’s Women and Public Policy Program and its Cultural Bridge Fellowship are supporting my internship this summer, it seems fitting that my transport into Dhaka would be laden with gender and cultural issues I had yet to explore. The Bridge Fellowship supports the summer internships of a number of Kennedy School students, all of whom are working on issues related to gender and most of whom are working internationally.

I’m working with BRAC, an NGO founded in 1971 to aid Bangladesh’s rehabilitation following a bloody war of independence from Pakistan. BRAC began as a fledgling nonprofit humbly called the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, and today it is the world’s largest NGO and new BRACs have successfully launched in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Tanzania and Sudan with affiliates in the U.S. and UK. Their headquarters remain in Bangladesh’s capital city of Dhaka. BRAC works for poverty alleviation and the empowerment of the poor, and it focuses its education, health, microfinance, and other programs on women and girls.

As many of you know, I’m studying education policy at HKS. BRAC happens to have an incredibly innovative and largely effective education programme – running, for instance, more than 30,000 primary schools throughout the country, with BRAC schoolchildren outperforming government school students.

I caveat my appraisal of the BRAC Education Programme as “largely” effective because quality education is a major issue in Bangladesh. They have high enrollment and attendance rates, but completion rates are nothing to write home about and many children do not pass a test of government competencies. So the BEP is planning to start an advocacy unit, to influence government policies to improve education quality and equity (according to gender, ethnicity, and special needs) in this developing country. And their Education Programme Director, Dr. Safiqul Islam, seems to believe I’m just the person to help them move through this next phase of developing an advocacy strategy. This week I’ve begun working with Trishna, the manager of BEP’s Capacity Development Unit, to engage in this process with programme staff, and later with BRAC teachers, parents and students as well as other NGOs doing education advocacy work in BRAC.

I’ve been here for a total of five days, and already I’m fascinated by BRAC and by Bangladesh, which is the world’s most densely populated country, and one marked by poverty and progress, corruption and innovation, and, it must be said, intense heat and humidity. I look forward to sharing this experience with you via this blog!