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The workshop was started with the welcome speech by Ms.Uma Chowdhury, Director, SUPRO. In the welcome speech, she called upon the all to ensure concerted efforts to make the campaign an effective one and hoped for a participatory day for well effective planning of the project activity.

The workshop comprised a presentation on the project detailed which outlined the main three project activities as follows: preparing the shadow report on MDGs progress in Bangladesh, budget monitoring on education, particularly on girls students at primary and secondary level; mobilization in line with global call to Stand up and Take Action against poverty.

There were discussions on the role and responsibilities of the SUPRO project team and networking members in relation to the project implementation. The district networking partners shall have the responsibility of implementing the activities at the district level such as, organizing focused group discussion while preparing the shadow report, organizing district level consultation on draft of the shadow report, doing budget monitoring activity at district level, preparing the monitoring report, organizing district level consultation on the findings of the budget monitoring report and organizing the grass roots mobilization regarding the Stand Up and Take Action against Poverty.

In addition to coordinating the whole project implementation, the SUPRO project team shall have the responsibility of preparing the shadow report on MDG progress and organizing all the national level events which includes national consultation on draft of the shadow report, national consultation on the findings of the budget monitoring and national level mobilization on Stand Up and Take Action against Poverty. The session was conducted by Qumrunnessa Nazly, Campaign Coordinator, SUPRO.

Conducted by Ms. Monisha Biswas, National MDGs Advocacy and Communication Expert, UN Millennium Campaign, second session of the workshop was on orientation on UN Millennium Campaign, Stand Up and Take Action against poverty, progress and challenge in achieving MDGs. Talking about the UN Millennium campaign, she said-It’s a new effort in the UN system. It supports the initiatives of bringing the grass root voices to the policy makers as to achieving the millennium development goals.UN Millennium Campaign works in four priority countries, Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan in South Asia region.

In connection with this MDGs campaign, she emphasized on ensuring the engagement of other relevant groups and networks such as, youths, local level policy makers and media apart from the networking partners. While talking about SUTA (Stand Up and Take Action) mobilization, Monisha Biswas said that there must have a key policy message through out the mobilization process that we want to convey to the policy makers. She underscored the importance of quality mobilization rather than quantitative participation alone.

There was a distinct session on budget monitoring where participants worked on potential area of monitoring intervention, and how monitoring could be carried out. The session was facilitated by Mr. Khawaja Main Uddin, Special Correspondent, and New Age.  In the session, the participants identified several intervention areas like, looking into the budget allocation and budget utilization for budget monitoring for girls’ students in primary and secondary levels. For the purpose they also identified several potential monitoring tools such as, interview with the girls’ students, on spot observation, interview with relevant authority, discussion with community leaders. Based on the group presentations, all agreed to finalize the budget monitoring tools and methods in the upcoming training on budget monitoring which is scheduled to be held at first week of August

However, during the open floor discussion, among other issues, the networking members expressed their repeated commitments of joint and active efforts to carry out the campaign activities successfully.