Brief Activity Report

Masjid Council for Community Advancement (MACCA)
House: 57 Road: 7 Sector: 4 Uttara, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Phone: +88-02-8954305, 8922008; Fax: +88-02-8922008
Email: macca@dhaka.net
web:masjidcouncilbd.org

 Mission of MACCA:

Masjid Council for Community Advancement (MACCA) is a faith based development, humanitarian and campaigning organization working for human security, sustainable integrated development, peace and communal harmony. MACCA is dedicated to working with individuals, challenged communities and other development and humanitarian partners to overcome people’s vulnerability and sufferings irrespective of their religion, race, ethnicity or gender. Inspired by core values of Islam, MACCA strives for creating an egalitarian society free from poverty, extremism and injustice.

Values of MACCA:

All activities of MACCA are guided by the following values and principles—

• Equality and equity: MACCA believes that all human beings are born equal and MACCA’s work contributes to the equity to address any forms of inequality.
• Access and inclusion: MACCA believes in inclusion and access for all regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, social status, or gender.
• Peace, tolerance and communal harmony: MACCA strives to promote peace, tolerance and communal harmony through its work.
• Social rights and responsibilities: MACCA believes in shared social rights and responsibilities and creates options for people to have the rights and perform the responsibilities.
• Results: MACCA is result oriented. Whatever MACCA does, MACCA would like to see its results from the field.

Vision of MACCA:

Through the implementation of a faith based development model, MACCA works for creating a world free from poverty, inequality, extremism and injustice. Within next five years MACCA would like to see itself playing an international mainstream development, humanitarian and campaigning role with wide networks, alliances, partners and offices around the world and launching a long term global interfaith campaign to address global human security, extremism, communal harmony, peace and development.

Organizational background of MACCA:

Registered with the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies of the Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh under Societies Act, MACCA started its interventions in 1999. MACCA has a country wide interfaith network in Bangladesh with trained Imams and leaders and followers from different religions. MACCA’s organizational capacity and strong network around the country has placed itself in an ideal position to facilitate faith based partnerships in development and humanitarian work and to initiate culturally appropriate and effective interfaith campaigns to address people’s values, misconceptions and behavioral issues deep rooted in culture and traditional practices.

So far MACCA has received support from individuals, private sector, the Ministry of Religious Affairs of the Bangladesh Government, Commonwealth of Learning, USAID, UNAIDS and World Bank/Social Development Foundation. MACCA was a bidding partner with Family Health International to take part and win the RFA for the Bangladesh AIDS Program (BAP) from USAID to provide faith based support to HIV and AIDS prevention, care and support. Currently MACCA is implementing the following development projects—

• Village piped water supply project
• Interfaith response to HIV and AIDS prevention, care and support
• Mosque based non formal schooling program
• Income generation program for the rural poor
• Integrated development program for ideal village (Parshi)
• Faith leaders training and welfare project
• Children welfare program(CWP)
• Development education for faith leaders

MACCA also provides humanitarian assistance to families affected by natural disasters. Since 2000, MACCA has worked in 7 districts facing emergencies and distributed relief to around 3,000 families. Besides, MACCA runs two welfare centers for providing shelter, home and all necessary supports to 40 children abandoned by their parents. MACCA’s other humanitarian programs included free or low-cost ambulance service and free Friday Medical clinics to provide treatment and medications to the poor and destitute.

MACCA launched a faith campaign against terrorism and extremism in the name of religion right after the sensational terrorist bomb attack across the country on 17 August 2006. As part of this campaign, MACCA produced and distributed around 10,00,000 copies of posters with religious interpretation against terrorism and extremism and gave speeches at the mosques and national TV by faith leaders. MACCA was instrumental in forming the Council for Inter-Faith Harmony, Bangladesh and organized a national seminar in 2006 on inter-religious harmony with participation of top leaders and representatives from all religions, the Prime Minister and other influential ministers, political leaders, NGO and civil society leaders, head of diplomatic missions and general people. MACCA also organized interfaith seminar on HIV and AIDS prevention, care and support and facilitated faith leaders’ active participation in World AIDS Campaign.

With its central office at Uttara, Dhaka MACCA has a regional office in Manikganj and 3 other project offices in 3 different sites. In addition, MACCA runs two Children Welfare Homes and has appointed 48 Area Coordinators in 20 different districts.

Major Activities of MACCA

Mosque based education:

The project covers the drop out children of 6-10 years age group. The learners are taught with formal education texts such as Bengali, English, and Math. In order to promote the morality of the learners they are also given some religious teachings. The duration of the course is three years. The project is supported by the Zakat Board of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, GoB, and donations from different individuals. The learners are expected to join standard III of formal education system after the completion of the course. 

The number of ongoing centers is 103 having involved 3390 learners. Previously it covered 4288 learners through 134 centers. Gender parity in enrollment is strictly maintained. 90% of the previous learners have been able to join formal education either in school and madrasha. The Imams act as the teachers of the centers.

Table 1: Showing update on mosque-based education program

Imam training

It is a core project of MACCA and it aims to promote the capacity of Imams of different mosques of Bangladesh. Bangladesh is a Muslim country in terms of number of people having faith in Islam. Mosques are most readily available and accessible institutions and approximately there have been 0.25 million mosques in the country. MACCA firmly believes that if the Imams of the mosques are rightly oriented with socio-economic issues, apart from their customary religious role, they can make miracle in the country. Most of the people of the country attend the Juma prayer and thus the Friday khutba can be a good tool to disseminate information in the community on various issues concerning socio-economic development. Under this backdrop, the project offers different kind of training to Imams for raising their capacity and understanding. So far 8836 Imams underwent the training through 79 batches.

Table 2: Summary of MACCA Imam training program

Faith based approach to HIV/AIDS prevention

While prevention is the only solution as of today to the deadly threats of HIV/AIDS, the influence of faith is globally and greatly accepted and recognized in the prevention, care and support procedure of HIV and AIDS. MACCA, being supported by Family Health International (FHI) - a partner of USAID, has been working to promote the awareness of the community people about HIV/AIDS. Primarily the program involves Imams but looks forward to involving other faith people. Under this project, MACCA organizes Training for Faith Leaders, Talk Show on TV (ntv), Interfaith Dialogue/ Seminar etc.  

Table 3: Activity Report of HIV Prevention Program

Ideal village project

Based on the previous experience in the area of community development, MACCA is now piloting this project. It adopts an integrated approach to community development. The core concept behind the project is strengthening relationships among the neighbors- making them sensitive to the needs of others living in the community. The core component of the project is Parshi.  A Parshi (a Bengali word means neighbor), involving 30-40 people of the same locality (mainly neighbors) living under poverty, sits together to sort out their problems and solutions as well to them. PRA tool is applied to identify community needs.  In a community there can be a number of Parshi(s). It has various development components such as health, sanitation, education, income generation, capacity building, and leadership building etc. Resourceful community people contribute to financial support of the project in the form of zakat. Apart from individual zakat money, the Zakat Board of the GoB also supports the project. In all interventions community ownership is ensured. Participation in the program is family based and gender equity is strictly maintained. The vision of the project is to solve the community problems through community leadership and preferably through community resources. The major tasks of MACCA under the project are to enhance the capacity of the Parshi people, link them up with existing service delivery institutions, and mobilize community resources etc.

            The total program is run by the active participation of the beneficiaries. The program currently runs in Chandirchar Village under Zagir Union Parishad in Manikgonj Sadar Upazailla. The number of Parshi stands as of now 8 that engage approximately 300 people. The project is expected to be replicated in other parts of the country after the successful completion of the piloting.

Table 4: IDEAL village program and its achievement

Children Welfare Program (CWP)

The project takes care of the orphans, abandoned, and physically challenged children. Located in Uttara the project looks after educational, health, lodging, and food needs of 39 children. The number of male and female children is respectively 25 and 14. Many of them attend formal education institutions.

Table 5: MACCA’s Children Welfare Program at a glance

Income generation project

It works through more than one hundred groups to cover 3351 beneficiaries with various income promotion activities. The beneficiaries are supported with capacity building interventions and financial support. Islamic principles of investment are applied in case of financial support. Capacity building activities raise the entrepreneurship skills of the beneficiaries. 

Table 6: Chronology of achievement: Income generating program

Complementary partnership for development:

Most of the development programs are now looking for culturally appropriate and effective behavioral approach to address barriers and change harmful behavior and practices deep rooted in beliefs and culture. Inclusion of faith leaders has been proved as an effective way to achieve development goals. With its scholarly capacity, access to faith leaders and media, MACCA is now considered as one of the major players in development sector. MACCA is receiving invitations from the NGOs, government and UN bodies to take part and complement the development efforts by removing religious misconceptions and barriers and facilitating behavior change through faith advocates such as Imams and religious leaders. By developing a comprehensive curriculum addressing development agendas, barriers and misconceptions and by training the religious leaders, MACCA can develop a ready cadre of faith ambassadors to development under a complementary partnership program for development.

Taking into consideration the above view MACCA has undertaken a project titled, “Open and Distance Learning Approach to Strengthening Development Initiatives through Interfaith Responses in Bangladesh”. The goal of this project is to develop the capacity of different religious leaders to support and strengthen development initiatives undertaken by government, non-government and community based organizations by using the infrastructure and communication channels of faith institutions. The project is targeted to train initially a total of 200 faith leaders (160 male, 40 female). Having support from the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) the project set off in April 2007 and until June 2007 it developed a curriculum for a ‘development education program for faith leaders’.

Promotion of gender equity and empowerment of women

MACCA is very much committed to gender equity and women empowerment. It primarily focuses on the issues that stand as hindrances to women empowerment. The major threat to women empowerment in Bangladesh is the economic insolvency and lack of awareness about gender issues. While it helps promote the economic status of the women through various development interventions, it considers dowry as a critical factor responsible for women repression particularly in rural areas and among poor people. Marriages get separated, women abandoned, persecuted, and humiliated for dowry.
 
In order to promote the culture of cooperation and respectfulness in the family MACCA propagates for ‘ Marriages without Dowry’. While marriage is blessed by the Almighty, dowry is prohibited by Islam and thus in the name of dowry any kind of repression on women is strongly condemned. MACCA supports to organize marriage functions of the poor women and also provide some financial support in kind to make a way out for livelihood for the new couples. So far it organized approximately 50 marriages (without dowry).

MACCA follows up the couples and assists them in various occasions especially during flood and other natural calamities. It also plans to sit with women organizations and activists to share their concerns and to advocate subsequently to mainstream the issue of the women in the light of Islamic interpretation for translation in policy environment.

Promotion of Interfaith Cooperation

MACCA pays great value to interfaith harmony and cooperation and rejects any form of unjust treatment on the basis of religion. Committed to the noble principles of Islam, it promotes the culture of cooperation and tolerance. It recognizes the right to have different faiths. 

Of late MACCA had the opportunity to act as the national secretariat of Council for Interfaith Harmony, Bangladesh (CIH, BD).  On behalf of CIH, BD MACCA facilitated the organization of an unprecedented national conference in February 2006 that was graced by the Prime Minister of Bangladesh. About 1500 religious followers and leaders of major faiths such as Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, in Bangladesh attended the conference.  Representatives of different diplomatic missions, MPs, Ministers, high officials joined the conference and applauded the initiative. Veteran faith leaders graced the conference and stressed the need of such moves for greater cooperation for development and peace in the country.  It opened a new arena for organizations like MACCA.

In May 2007 another national-level round table discussion on ‘Role of religion in nation building’ was arranged. MACCA played a significant role in arranging the discussion. The program was attended by the eminent faith leaders of the country.   

MACCA attaches great value to cooperation among people of different faiths because it minimizes the gaps, strengthens bonds, consolidates unity, and provides greater scope for contribution for faith leaders.
 

Faith based integrated development model:

In Bangladesh there are around 250,000 mosques and a significant number of other faith institutions with around 270,000 faith leaders working at the faith institutions. These faith institutions have space, infrastructure, manpower, credibility, access to and influence over individuals and communities and other resources. But these huge resources are largely under-utilized and faith leaders’ time and efficiency are not taken advantage of. By developing and implementing a faith institution based development model MACCA can make effective use of these community resources to achieve development goals. MACCA is planning to undertake such project in near future.

Contact:

Masjid Council for Community Advancement (MACCA)
House: 57, Road: 7(Level-2), Sector: 4, Uttara, Dhaka
Phone:88-02-8954305, Fax:  88-02-8922008
Email: macca@dhaka.net, Web: www.masjidcouncilbd.org