Each year, TEAR runs Development Education Experience Programs – small group trips that enable participants to visit our partners’ projects, hear real people’s stories and learn more about community development. Here, Jeff McClintock shares a story from our recent BanglaDEEP trip about a project run by TEAR’s partner Prottasha.

As a former owner-builder, my ears pricked up when I heard that some of our BanglaDEEP group would be visiting a working sawmill during our time with TEAR’s partner Prottasha. There’s something very appealing about the roar of a huge bandsaw, the smell of sawdust and the sight of freshly sawn slabs of timber.

By all appearances, the sawmill – located at a place called Kotiadi, near Kishoreganj in central Bangladesh – looks just like any number of other sawmills around Bangladesh. Various timbers are milled into sawn timber for furniture making and building materials.

However, what is very different about the Kotiadi sawmill is how it is managed – not as a private enterprise owned by some wealthy businessperson, but as a cooperative of community members drawn from a dozen Self-Help Groups. The mill began in 2002 following the establishment of a cooperative known as a Union Committee. This committee, representing about 550 Self-Help Group members, was a key factor in sourcing the start-up capital for the project and remains vital in the mill’s ongoing management.

Today, the sawmill generates enough revenue to provide direct employment for five permanent and three casual staff, as well as contributing to the livelihoods of an additional 50 wood suppliers, furniture makers and transport workers. An annual profit of around $1250 is also distributed amongst the group members represented by the committee.

The committee is aiming to develop leadership and management skills, provide employment, sustainably utilise local resources and increase dignity and unity amongst group members.

The committee is very clear about its aims for the sawmill. As well as objectives related to income generation, the committee is aiming to develop leadership and management skills, provide employment, sustainably utilise local resources and increase dignity and unity amongst group members. In the future, the committee hopes to expand the sawmill and purchase the land on which it is located.

It was a real highlight to visit the Kotiadi sawmill and to see the enthusiasm with which the committee members are operating their business. But, like many aspects of community development work in Bangladesh, I was also challenged by what I saw.

I was reminded of the lives of the earliest Christian believers, who, according to Acts 4, willingly gave up even their right to individual ownership of possessions in order to contribute to the common good.

To start with, I was struck by the strong sense of cooperation exhibited by the sawmill committee. I was reminded of the lives of the earliest Christian believers, who, according to Acts 4, willingly gave up even their right to individual ownership of possessions in order to contribute to the common good. Choosing to work together was not without risk for the sawmill committee members, with the investment of a significant amount of their own money.

This message of community and the power of cooperative action is what I will take with me from the sawmill committee at Kotiadi.

I contrast this to the individualistic way that many of us live in Australia, where our lifestyle as believers is often difficult to distinguish from the wider society. Although we may not need to work cooperatively for the sake of financial survival, I wonder how much richer our lives could be if we learned to do it for the sake of our spiritual health and the Kingdom. Self-sufficiency and independence are popular concepts in the west, but the biblical story is one of inter-dependence, of people relying on God and each other in community.

This message of community and the power of cooperative action is what I will take with me from the sawmill committee at Kotiadi. It is my hope that their success will inspire me to work more closely with others to achieve positive change that – like in their situation – would simply not be possible through individual effort alone.

Source: http://www.tear.org.au/act/deeps/deep-stories/building-community-in-bangladesh