No to Donation

Home

No to Donation

  • No to Donation &

Yes to Cultural Empowerment...?

Globally, donation is a process from developed nations to developing country to help the people in need. However, most donations are end up with conflict of interest, prescribed international expert and high rate of interest that become burden for the developing country like Bangladesh. Moreover, the donor agency like UN has a high cost to pay the international employees where hardly there is any representation of the native community. Consequently, there is hardly mentionable community impact in the field level. For example, UNESCO pay the highest level of salary to its permanent staff including pension and other benefit whereas, local staff are casual without any pension or health insurance.

Arguably, when a donation process from the donor country, they place their objective which may not align with destination community. Subsequently, they have their own arrangement of the experts who suppose to be highly paid and not necessary they are qualified enough to back stop the project. Majority have a few field visits where they have limited queries from the community to perceive and afterwards, they go back home to develop strategy. In contrast, local experts are more convenient to understand the local communication and field situation but are poorly paid which marginalizes the empowerment of destination community. From the empowerment view such donations make the locals dependent and loose their self-esteem to safeguard their heritage identity. Other than UN, financial donor like World Bank or ADB have their invest for interest cycle which remains a big drain for the national development of Bangladesh.

Contextually, monetary donations is one kind of support that can empower its recipients by providing them with financial resources to have more power and control over their situation (Bekkers & Wiepking, 2011; Vohs et al., 2006). However, the extent to which donation empower community id debatable based on their potential to produce socio-cultural change (for similar arguments in the context of refugees and poor communities, see Becker et al., 2022; Jackson & Esses, 2000; Khanom et al;2019). Bareket et al (2022) coined the issue on domestic and business context where is less chance to have change in domestic role to empower women compare the business reinforce more social changes to increase the percentage of women. Generally, this sort of empowerment is economic, and we want to introduce cultural empowerment to enhance women participation in domestic and business. Cultural empowerment is a concept invented through tourism to empower marginalized community like women and indigenous people. From an intangible heritage point of view, women are the bearer of the creative industry, festive, ritual, oral story and music to offer potential through business and tourism. As such, business in a developing country always is a subject of middleman who take the major share since there is less formal structure for investor (guest) and host community.

Why Cultural Empowerment?

Monetary donations can provide resources, but their ability to produce socio-cultural change is debatable. Cultural empowerment focuses on enhancing women’s participation in domestic and business life.

Women are the bearers of creative industries, rituals, oral stories, and music — offering potential through business and tourism. However, middlemen often exploit these opportunities due to weak formal structures.

Cultural Empowerment Through Social Business

A social business is a new form of profit-maximizing business, but not a charity, which tries to achieve its social objective in a self-sustainable manner. Also, unlike traditional for-profit businesses, which focus on profit maximization, social business focuses on the maximization of social benefits and explores how to bring positive impacts to society or to the environment (Yunus et al., 2010). Social business can be seen as a subclass of social entrepreneurship, distinguished from conventional entrepreneurship through the ‘relative priority given to social wealth creation vs. economic wealth creation. Further social business models can be applied to environmental issues, such as climate change, water shortages, and industrial pollution. Onward from the environment, we want to integrate the model for cultural issues to ensure empowerment. Following the cultural debate, Khanom et al;(2019) developed a host-guest authentication model for cultural empowerment through tourism which she adopted in the social business model (Yunus et al., 2010).

Modality of Social Businesses

Type I:

Focuses on businesses dealing with social objectives only

E.g. The product produced is for the benefit of the poor. Those who will contribute 50,000 to 200,000 taka that will be countable as donation and subsequently no benefit.

Donate

Type II:

Can take up any profitable business so long as it is owned by the poor and the disadvantaged, who can gain through receiving direct dividends or by some indirect benefits.

E.g. The product could be produced by the poor but exported to an international market while net profits would go towards workers benefits.

Become a partner

Expected Outcome

  • Overcome poverty and social problems (education, health, culture)
  • Achieve financial, economic, and cultural sustainability
  • Investors get back investment only — no extra dividends
  • Company profits stay for expansion
  • Gender-sensitive, environmentally, and culturally conscious
  • Fair wages and good working conditions
  • Cultural dependence and beneficiaries

Why we beg

  • Shahida Khanom PhD
  • The Daily Prothom Alo, Bangladesh
I started my first job at the UNESCO Cultural Heritage Division after completing my master’s. My aim was to work on the Sundarbans World Heritage project. However, since I was working as a programme officer in the cultural division, I had to oversee other cultural heritage-related projects. You may be surprised to know that UNESCO is the only organisation within the United Nations where scientific research on culture is conducted. However, it is unfortunate that culture is the most underfunded agenda!
Those of us who grew up in Bangladesh typically view culture with visual arts, music, literature, and so on. However, the most important aspect is intangible cultural heritage (ICH). In communities like ours, which are rich in both natural and cultural resources, this intangible cultural heritage is at the core. According to UNESCO’s definition, this heritage includes practices, presentations, expressions, knowledge, and skills that are essential for community-based empowerment.
In my long career and research life, I have worked extensively on community empowerment and the distribution of benefits. I have often wondered why, despite having so many natural resources, we still beg for help. Every time I go abroad for a conference or seminar, I have to begin by saying that we are a ‘beggar’ country! Honestly, at that moment, I don’t feel like attending the seminar anymore.
In our extended family-based society, it is crucial to understand how economic distribution and decision-making work. Our family system is father-based, where the father is the primary earner and decision-maker. According to Muslim law, since sons inherit two-thirds of the property, they are responsible for the extended family’s affairs. Since we are taught from a young age that financial responsibility lies with the father, we never make any effort to earn. We do not receive any training in age-appropriate skills or earning. Moreover, we do not help our mothers with domestic work. We think domestic responsibilities are solely for our mothers and housemaids. As a result, we fail to acquire practical skills beyond rote memorisation in school. Even though our mothers work extremely hard, they have no say in decision-making. This directly impacts the children, especially when it comes to wealth distribution and leadership.
Since women have no economic responsibilities, they are not accountable for their empowerment. There is no mental or physical training on how to coordinate with the family and stand on their own feet. In most cases, mothers think that by keeping their children dependent on them, they can maintain control over them. These dependent children may do well academically, but they cannot manage both family and professional life. When I was doing my PhD in Australia, I noticed the plight of Bangladeshi students. The situation is such that before completing the first year of their PhD, they marry and place all the household responsibilities on their wives. This is not just in Australia, but also in Canada, where many women suffer due to this system, especially working women.
In our family culture, only the earning father has the freedom to express an opinion. Since we do not learn to speak up, we do not understand how to make decisions as adults. Most of the time, we stand silently, heads down. As long as, our parents are alive, they do not want to retire. I have noticed that this also affects society and the state. Our country is run by government officials, professionals, and political leaders, and none of them want to retire. As a result, younger generations never come to power.

Although the legal age of adulthood in our country is 18, we remain dependent on our fathers indefinitely. Fathers are expected to complete our education, find us a job, and arrange our marriage. In a poor country like ours, where most people are working-class and impoverished, fathers do not have two-thirds of their property to pass on. Even the middle class is in a dire state, as their salary is barely enough to support their wives, children, parents, siblings, and relatives. We do not have any family-based savings programmes, which is why many people spend everything and then have to beg for more. From a young age, we are not taught to budget or save with a priority system. I have noticed that most boys cannot save money and end up borrowing to support their extended families. Beyond family, there are our region-based various hospitality and protocol traditions, such as dowries, iftar meals, Jamai Shasthi (son-in-law’s celebration), mango-jackfruit celebrations, and Eid festivals. In almost every celebration, there is a lot of exchange of clothes, food, and money in the bride’s family. I believe that excessive spending on food and money under the guise of hospitality is putting our social security in jeopardy. We are no longer in the era of Shaista Khan, when one could buy eight maunds of rice for a single taka. Now, we carry an endless burden of debt, and we consider begging to be a source of pride. The leading headlines in our newspapers focus on how much ‘alms’ different countries are giving. We need a project titled ‘We will not die begging!’ The aim of this project would be to stop family-based begging and ensure cultural and collective empowerment. Finally, we must understand that helping someone and begging are two entirely different things.