BEES started its journey in 1975 with an aim to be with the people those who are at disadvantaged situations. Since then BEES has been contributing towards the development of the poor with utmost commitments and enthusiasm. BEES believes that sustainable development of the poor communities can only be ensured if the development activities are shared and owned by the communities. Being a development partner, BEES attitude is always to support the poor with appropriate assistance, link them with local level institutions and facilitate the government policy so that development is sustained.

BEES. from its long association with the people has experienced that without integration and addressing the peoples' requirements following the participatory approach, real development will never be attained. Therefore, BEES is very careful in designing and implementing its programs. BEES programs are contributing to supplement and compliment the services taken by the Government of Bangladesh.

The overall achievements of the year 2001-2002 were quite satisfactory in terms of the annual targets. BEES successfully addressed over 600,000 population within 26 districts of Bangladesh. Development initiatives were continued to accelerate employment and income generation through the Micro-credit and Micro-Enterprise Development programs. BEES shared a major portion of the credit for the beneficiaries from its own fund. Agriculture and Social Forestry program targeted landless, marginal and small farmers including tribal people and successfully promoted agricultural crop diversification and increased food production. The education program facilitated the disadvantaged children and adolescents who had either been dropped-out from regular schooling or never been enrolled in any school. The program supplemented national efforts towards building an illiteracy-free society. Health initiatives under BEES program significantly enhanced the health and nutritional status of the women and children under the program areas. The lessons learnt from different programs would be the platform of BEES to move forward.

Credit Plus is another innovation of BEES's services which is providing financial assistance to the target beneficiaries under "Sheba Package" along with other development services. A common trend of micro-credit programs in Bangladesh is to provide economic support to the beneficiaries to enhance their economic condition only through Income Generating Activities (IGAs). Unfortunately most of these programs do not critically analyze the socio-cultural and other development aspects including the question of sustainability. Hence these programs may partially contribute in social and other development and as a consequence, sustainable changes in the life of targeted beneficiaries are not being observed.

We believe that parallel to financial support, people need to widen their periphery of knowledge and skill and; fulfill social requirements. The approach "Credit Plus" promotes human attitudes, social norms, values & culture. It is linked with other essential services such as basic health & nutrition, education, training along with IGAs, which have direct impact on the welfare of the potential beneficiaries. BEES has introduced this approach since last two years and a good number of beneficiaries are brought under these facilities on pilot basis. Considering the demand, BEES has a plan to expand this approach among all the target beneficiaries.

The accomplishments of BEES are not only the credit of its own. It is the Community People who contributed their utmost effort to transform the initiatives into actions, the Donors who provided us the financial and technical assistance, the Executive Board of BEES who contributed to develop the policy guidelines, and finally the committed Staff who leads to the accomplishments with their professionalism and sincere efforts.

The ultimate goal of BEES is organizational sustainability. BEES is trying to reduce its dependency over the donors' fund and become self-reliant. The new S years plan (2004-2008) Credit Plus Development Program (CPDP) has been developed taking into consideration the continuity and sustainability of the beneficiaries of BEES. Now BEES is in the process of establishing its motto through hard work and sincere efforts.

We hope that the Report will be of interest to the valued readers to know about the programs and philosophy of BEES and to this report will be a source of some information to the partners of BEES who are constantly supporting its initiatives. For detail information about BEES please visit http://beesngo.blogspot.com.