Community Development Association (CDA) is a highly
secular, non-partisan-non-Government Development Organization (NGDO)
established in the year 1985-1986 in North Western Part of Bangladesh CDA gradually has been shifted its strategic
position from charity to a Right based Organization now facilitating among the
poorest, landless and marginal farmers along with the plain land indigenous
people (IP) including the
differently able men, women &youth with a view to empower, ensure and
secure access to land Rights from its inception. Initially, CDA entered
voluntarily in the rural poor communities in the remotest villages in greater
Dinajpur district the then and it was committed to organize the rural landless poor
with the concept of Integrated Community Development Program(ICDP) and tried to
unite them in several small groups at their doorsteps in several villages from
1985-86 to 1988 -89 in association with OXFAM-GB
&CAFOD-APHD-Hongkong.
Later, upon the
practical experience gathered from the reality CDA initiated and facilitated
the small groups to reorganize them and re-strengthen their capacity to
institute a village based Federation of the landless poor connecting with the village context with a
view to ensure access & utilize local resources within the village to
promote the sustainable livelihood through implementing of Integrated Rural Development
Program (IRDP)for the period from 1989 to 1995-2004 and able to develop a
people centered development model which was contributing to bring significant
qualitative changes in the lives of rural poor and IPs in the Northern part of Bangladesh.
CDA had a significant growing period for institutionalizing itself with an unique
image of integrated approach assisted to obtain a very clear political strategy to innovate the
socio-political development framework followed by the International human
rights declarations leading towards the formulation of the National pro-poor
policy(s) for the poverty reduction, empowerment of the rural poor, women
rights, Land rights, Labor rights, Consumer’s rights ,Child rights as
well as ecology and development, in relation with the National Constitutional
options with the support from OXFAM-GB,
NOVIB-The Netherlands, Swiss Development Cooperation(SDC) and Bread for the
world-Germany. Consequently CDA itself has been inspired to design and
determined its mission statement and formulated the shared vision as
well as building up the unity of the landless, disempowered and the marginalized peasant’s
e.g. among rural poor men, women, and the youth through building their self-help institution at the village
level separately but, CDA has been playing the role of facilitating and assist
to strengthen for identifying and addressing their poverty issues independently
but collectively from the socio-economic, political ,cultural and ecological context.
Considering such an effective mechanism to identify the local needs and demands
CDA gathered more experience about the social transformation from such mobilization
process by the organized people and insighted to the alignment of this process
with the ICESC rights and civil
and political rights. Then CDA took the opportunity to include and apply the
human rights approach in its development process and start facilitation towards
the Peoples Initiative for Rights Assertion(PIRA) by the village based Federation.
CDA determined, its role, specified its support activities and separated its
identity from the village based institutions and re-positioned having a very strong
staunch upon the human rights and facilitating the united poor people to
strengthen their management capacity to deal with institutional process parallel
to the political and Government Administrative
tiers at the local level to make the local authorities accountable at the grass-root level and a solidarity-networking
process constituted with the Civil Society Organizations moving forward to the
Agrarian reforms to ensure the rights having access to the public land, water ,forest along with securing rights to the natural
resources for sustainable livelihood. CDA has been facilitating its technical
knowledge generation support among the united rural poor and its solidarity
networks at the various human resource mobilization levels on the basis of
gathered experience from the practice of the micro-institutions which is already
established as a protection mechanism evidently. Also, such an effective
mechanism has a role to ensure the People Centered Governance towards building
an effective convergence tied-up over the poor, local CSOs and the local Government
in taking the Local level decision collectively. So, Institution Building (IB)
is a core program of CDA in the name of Peoples
Organization is constructed with the village people parallel to the local
Government Institutions are attainable an unique people centered pluralistic
development efforts as a tool of sustainable intervention strategy inspiring to
undertake the supportive role for achieving all sorts of demand driven issues
for the rural landless poor especially for defending the ancestral land of
ethnic minorities and Indigenous People against the grabbers throughout the
plain land including the support to the differently able persons as well.
Village Based Institution Building is not only the program of CDA it is also a
Process in implementing or mobilizing any People Centered activities or reform/governance
issues for social change and development meaning change the lifestyle, attitude
and the behavior of the rural disadvantage communities by themselves getting
information about their rights as a citizen from local, national and
international sources through CDA as a facilitating organization with the support
from Bread for the world(Bftw)-Germany and the moral and knowledge support from
the different networking organizations e.g. National, Regional and the Global
civil society organizations as well.
