This article highlights the personal and professional problems of NGO fieldworkers in Bangladesh. The paper draws on field research with the front-line workers of four NGOs, their clients, immediate superiors, and senior management. Fieldworkers face personal problems such as job insecurity, financial hardships, difficulties with accommodation, and family dislocation. These problems differ according to gender, marital status, and age. Professional problems include training, promotion, and transfer. In addition, fieldworkers face problems in their external relationships, including suspicion, resistance or lack of cooperation from religious leaders and localites, time and resource constraints, competition for clients, and eagerness of the intended beneficiaries simply to get access to financial or material benefits. It will be argued that the strengths of the fieldworkers of Southern NGOs have been largely unexplored and undervalued.

Authors

Morshed Ahmad, Mokbul

Editors

Eade, Deborah

Journal

Development in Practice Volume 12 Issue 2

Publication date

01 May 2002

DOI

10.1080/09614520220127694

Publisher

Oxfam GB

Routledge

Type

Journal article

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