Future Directions
The future role of CODEC in the coastal belt is the one of becoming a strong national advocacy organization. The aim is to be able to influence decision makers at all levels from the UP to the central government in Dhaka thereby improving the conditions under which the coastal population live, and at the same time give room for the coastal population to influence their own lives and express their own wishes for a better life.
This role cannot be effectively fulfilled without support from the two other programmes: Economic Development and Socio-Cultural Development. These two programmes will work in tandem to support the National Advocacy Programme.
Compared to the present programmes CODEC put less emphasis on the primary health and education programmes in the future strategy. The strategy is to use the established CCs at Union and Upazilla levels to facilitate that the government provide these services to community members. An assumption behind this approach is that the GoB will actually provide the primary education and health services to these disadvantaged communities as promised and planned. CODEC needs to be cautious in this respect looking at the history of effective implementation of government plans and programmes.
Governance
The cross cutting approach through the present Socio-Cultural Programme is the establishment of Ward Committees, and CCs at Union and Upazilla levels. CODEC aims to establish a national, or coastal, organization (e.g. a federation type of organization) on the basis of the CCs. Considering that the members of the CCs are democratically elected, this “federation” will come to represent voices of the coastal communities. In establishing this “federation” its roles will have to be determined, also vis-ŕ-vis CODEC.
A natural next step will be for CODEC to invite members of the “federation” into its general body. This will have a number of advantages for CODEC:
• Its legitimacy towards the government central and local structures will increase as it has democratically elected members in its General Body;
• The issues to be prioritised by CODEC in its core National Advocacy Programme will to a high degree reflect the main concerns of the coastal communities;
• The image of CODEC within the donor community will further increase as it will be regarded as more that a service provider or project implementer.