Hasanah Group Model

Approximately fifty percent of Bangladesh’s total population live below the poverty line. In other words these people are deprived of various basic rights, such as right to food, education, health, shelter etc. They lead a distressed life. Poverty is one of the major obstacles to overall development of Bangladesh. Not only the individuals but the entire society is affected by the impact of poverty. The position of Islam in regard to helping the poor people and working for their greater development is very sturdy and apparent. The Quran in Surah Al-Mau’n narrates “Have you seen him who denies the Recompense? That is he who repulses the orphan (harshly), And urges not the feeding of Al-Miskeen (the poor)…” The Prophet [PBUH] is reported to have said “if any individual of any village wakes up in the morning having passed the night starving, Allah [SWT] does not take the responsibility to sustain the village” [Musnad-EImam Ahmad]. Allah [SWT] says in the Quran “And in their wealth the beggar and the outcast had due share” [Adh-Dhariyat: 19].

Zakat is one of the major strategies for poverty reduction in Islam. Apart from purifying the wealth of the rich, poverty reduction is at the heart of zakat system. According to prominent Islamic scholar Dr. Yususf-Al-Qaradawi, zakat has to be distributed in a way that it uproots poverty, ends the root causes of poverty and becomes enduringly enough for the recipient and the recipient does not require zakat second time. The great Caliph of Islam Hazrat Omar Faruqe [RA] declared in his thoughtful policy “while you donate, make the person solvent”. He ordered those who were responsible for distribution of zakat “give zakat several times to those who deserve it, even if they require 100 camels each [i.e. donate as long as poverty is not eradicated]”. Thus, it is obvious that the implications of zakat lie in poverty reduction and building a caring society by planned and effective use of zakat. As part of building such a caring society Masjid Council has been implementing community based integrated development program by using zakat. The program is popularly known as Hasana.

Making the difference

Goal

Objectives

• Ensuring sustainable employment opportunities and increase in income by up-scaling capability for employment and income generation activities and ensuring access of the target beneficiaries to local resources and services;
• Ensuring nutrition, health and medical services rights of the poverty stricken and deprived people;
• Raising the rate of education, capability and moral standard of the target people by ensuring life skills related education for the elderly people and education for the children;
• Extending support to the physically challenged people, widows, orphans, poor elderly people to prevent humanitarian crisis at individual and family levels and reducing the amount of loss during disasters by applying indigenous knowledge and strategies and raising awareness of community people;
• Promoting moral standard of the community people and establishing the culture of empathy in the society by
  motivating target people to follow religious and moral values.

Beneficiaries

Implementation Strategies

• Establishing community based development institutions i.e. Hasana group involving target beneficiaries;
• Transferring the ownership of capital formed by zakat to the groups for income generating activities of the members;
• Facilitating the Hasana groups by Masjid Council at the initial stage to run and manage the capital and development
  activities; however, the management would ultimately be transferred to the groups by making the members capable;
• Enabling target people by providing training to run efficiently income generating activities;
• Ensuring community ownership in capital formation, program implementation and monitoring;
• Up-scaling skill of the beneficiaries for marketing their products;
• Ensuring target people’s access to local services and resources by sensitizing them about their rights and making the government and local government service delivery departments caring towards the beneficiaries;
• Forming capital by accumulating zakat, sadaqah, ushar and other endowments.

Progress Report 2009-2010

Unfolding Successes

Khuki Begum : The transformation of a rural woman

Khuki Begum is a rural woman. After a few years of her marriage, her husband had been separated from the joint family of her father-inlaw. They had then two sons and a daughter and they were all minor. While they became separated they did not get any property that the separated son usually gets. However, they managed to purchase a small land with money taken from her father and from the savings of her husband to make a small house to live in. Her husband was a skilled crafts man and was able to manage livelihood. But he was not regular in work because he was idle and was devoted to playing cards. And eventually it was difficult to run the family. Then, crisis was regular in the family. The situation forced finally Khuki Begum to join some local NGOs for loan. She got it also and even managed to get her only daughter married.

But NGO loan was not a relief for her as she struggled to payback the weekly installments. Paying installments was just nightmare to her. Her struggle did not end here. And thus, she was looking for alternative opportunities to survive. NGO loan was easy to get but was difficult to payback. In 2005, she went with other community Over the years the program has significantly contributed to the economic and social development of the target people. Majority of the beneficiaries have been successful to cross the poverty line. It has impacted on health and education of the community people to join a meeting by Masjid Council. She listened carefully what Masjid Council staffs were talking. She could not believe her ears in the beginning. Masjid Council people were talking that they would not claim any interest; rather they would transfer the money to the members with ownership as that was their money. Strange!
Our money; how could it be?

Masjid Council staff explained to all of them. They told it was zakat money and it was their share. They were only the custodians of the money. She narrates her success story... “I really became influenced by their deliberations and started believing them and at last decided to join a group that was formed involving 30 poor people of our community. Unlike other NGOs in the weekly meeting they don’t rebuke us for weekly installments, they don’t press us to pay back the money but they advise us as to how we can change our lives; they motivate us to be good human beings, to be worthy people. They listen to us; they carefully analyze our situation and provide us pragmatic suggestions that how best we can utilize the money we get from them. They maintain the family approach to development i.e. they take care of the entire family. They counseled with my husband and finally made him off playing cards. My husband eventually became successful in changing his behavior and he started paying his attention to the family unlike the previous time. I managed to get TK. 30,000.00 from Masjid Council to purchase a power tiller. Not only we paid back the money to the Hasana program within a year but also saved extra 20-25 thousand Taka. Then we took 0.33 acres of land on lease and started cultivating vegetables. My husband also started doing real estate business in a small scale. Last year we earned together TK. 175,000 and after managing all expenditure of the family and paying back the installments to the Hasana group, we managed to purchase 0.02 acres of land. Currently our monthly income stands TK. 15,000.00. We are happy now. Apart from our economic solvency, we have learned many things from Masjid Cuncil. We have been aware of many things that are important for life. We practice religious values in our daily life and are trying to become good human beings. We express our deep sense of indebtedness to our Lord, Allah [SWT]. Masjid Council indeed has been our friend in need.”

AMANULLAH was not only poor but also was shackled with debts taken from different NGOs and rural money lenders at an exorbitant rate. He took loans to survive and to continue his small business of pickle. But every week paying back the installments was just nightmare. He had to pay more attention to the installments rather than to his small
business. He was then an example of a defeated human being; a man struggling hard to survive. He one day then saw a ray of hope while he encountered the Masjid Council staffs. Masjid Council started the poverty reduction rogram
in his community with zakat money. This novel program aims to transfer money or asset to the poor people in order of getting them out of poverty trap. He listened to Masjid Council staffs and became a member of Hasana group to join the poverty alleviation movement.

He said was just motivation; they tried to make us believe that every human being was important and we should not lose hope. They said Islam puts special emphasis on poverty reduction. Remaining as poor is not appreciated by Islam. They illustrated that zakat could be used to graduate us from poverty. It was amazing. We loved to listen to their interpretation”. In the beginning he took TK.10,000 from the group to run a small shop of pickle and again took TK. 15,000.00 and he took 0.66 acres of land on lease and started cultivating essential crops. Then he decided to run a grocery shop and took TK.32,000.00 from the Hasana group. The business was going on smoothly and he was doing profit. He again took TK.50,000.00 from group and leased agricultural land. He became successful to escape the trap of debt. Now he is out of vicious cycle of debt. He purchased, from his profit, 0.10 acres of land and constructed a tinshed room to live in. He also took 0.66 acres of land on lease.“Masjid Council shares with us a broad definition of development. They say only income is not enough if we don’t become good human beings. They teach us the importance of honesty, cooperation and truthfulness in life. They also provide us some basic training to promote our understanding on many important issues of life, such as family building, disaster preparedness, business trategies etc”, he commented. “We are very thankful to the people who pay zakat to Masjid Council to graduate us from the troment of poverty and powerlessness. We hope Masjid Council can manage more fund for Hasana program to spread the program countrywide”.