【Seminar Report】Drinking Water in Southwest Coast of Bangladesh: Special Focus on Field Survey and Its Outcomes

On Thursday, 2022 June 9th, a hybrid lecture by Dr. Shota Yamada a JSPS Fellow at Rikkyo University, was provided. His presentation tittle is: "Drinking Water in Southwest- Coast of Bangladesh: Special Focus on Field Survey and its Outcomes”

In His lecture, Dr. Yamada first Explained about his academic journey, such as how he decided the research question and his initial research interest during his master. He explained about his first field survey experience in Bangladesh for about 2 weeks in 2014. And the reasons for selecting the study site. Having a friend who work as an internship in NGO in Bangladesh is his first link to get the access to reach the object of his research. Ultimately, he enlarges his research focus from achievements and challenges of social enterprises to the problem itself. Dr. Yamada try to reveal the reasons why efforts by international community have failed to effectively address the issue of universal drinking water supply using the Southwest- Coast of Bangladesh as a case study based on an area studies perspective.

Dr. Yamada explained in his research result that NGOs tend to conduct multiple projects at the same time, and there is big influence of donor on NGO activities and unequal relationship between headquarters and branches, and in monitoring 40% NGOs have never visited drinking water supply facilities.  

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The lecture concludes with a Q&A session, during which Dr. Yamada and members of the audience went back and forth to dissect several questions such as what are the barriers in giving the information to the villagers? how to release the dependency from the NGO to villagers? why do the NGO do not empower the villagers? etc.

 

Written by Yusy Widarahesty (Doctor Student at Graduate School of International Relations)