Building community organizations to promote women empowerment and address gender based violence

Polli Shomaj is working as platforms of women at the grass-roots level through which they can claim their rights collectively. It has 2 types of members, the General Members are approximately 50-55 women from the grass-roots community, and they elect the 11 members Executive Committee. Polli Shomaj meets once a month and acts as a platform for discussion, raising awareness, and planning and implementing initiatives. It is the executive committee that makes decisions, and this committee is normally elected for a term of three years. The key intervention includes - ensures that deserving candidates access government services; participates in local governance activities such as voter mobilization, contesting elections, allocation of public land and water bodies, and informal dispute resolution; engages in local social initiatives such as emergency support to any poorer person, prevention of and response to violence against women, protesting human rights abuses, and mobilize resources from different GO and NGOs for the poor people, etc. The Polli Shomaj members also supported gaining strength to effectively engage in all these areas, in order for women to develop individual and collective agency. A simple monitoring checklist maintained to understand how effective each Polli Shomaj is. Key monitoring indicators include - meeting frequency, local resource mobilization status, initiative to prevent & respond to violence against women, participation in the local power structure, etc. Interventions are mostly voluntary by the Polli Shomaj members, they mobilize resources to support the community by themselves. A minimum staff force engaged from BRAC (for example one staff for 50 Polli Shomaj) and BRAC only provide the capacity-building support.