Data, meetings, and more data

Not much has been happening over the last few days - I've just been glued to the computer, entering data, cleaning data, analyzing data...kind of boring really. On the side however, I've been arranging meetings with a couple the large development organizations to talk about opportunities for EPRC to collaborate on some of the big livelihood programs that USAID recently gave funding through CARE and ACDI/VOCA. Bilqis and I met with some people heading up the second phase of Strengthening Households' Ability to Respond to Development Opportunities (SHOUHARDO-II) at CARE Bangladesh. They have an uncommonly nice office on the 9th-15th floors of a building in central Dhaka, which I must say has an awesome view. It still left me thinking, was the expense for this office and it's remote controlled everything conference room, generator-supplied security system, etc. really necessary? Couldn't some of that gone to their programs? Even so, I know CARE has a reputation for being one of the more responsible agencies when it comes to allocating their money, and I appreciated the entirely female security staff stationed outside the doors. Our meeting was somewhat informative, but because they are still in the initial stages of rolling out SHOUHARDO-II, they wouldn't/couldn't give us many concrete plans about their projects, so I came out of the meeting unsure of how successful it was for us. Today we met with ACDI/VOCA representatives at our office, and I felt that was a much more successful meeting. Their program, PROSHAR (can't remember exactly what it stands for but the goal is similar to SHOUHARDO), is also in the initial stages, but as they have not yet selected implementing partners, they were much more open to finding ways to collaborate with EPRC. It also sounds like they will be doing a lot of hiring in the near future (to my knowledge, they haven't had any other programs in Bangladesh, at least in the last several years), which may be of benefit to me if I decide to come back to work here rather than joining Peace Corps right away.

Tomorrow we'll be conducting a focus group in the area I visited a while ago just outside of Dhaka. I hope people will still be willing to come on a Friday morning! (Friday is the holy day, kind of like Sunday in the US.) Then I have plans to go to a play or something tomorrow night, and in between I might try to fit in some more data entry. Yesterday I was home sick all day, so I lost some precious time and need to make up for it. Sorry I don't have any pictures or anything all that exciting to share - hopefully I'll squeeze a few more interesting days before I leave in two weeks! Ramadan is coming up starting August 11th, so that promises to be an interesting experience - I'm interested to see what people do when they can't sit around and drink tea during the day...and how I'll be able to find food during the daylight hours.