82 Cognitive Dissonance

00:00:55 Lars Peter

Kuldeep Bandhu Aryal. Welcome to Trumanitarian.

00:00:59 Kuldeep

Thanks for having me here. Really excited for taking the conversation and see where it goes.

00:01:05 Lars Peter

Yeah. We are very excited as well because you're the Co lead of the BRAC Social Innovation Lab. You're based in Bangladesh. You're originally from Nepal, but work with BRAC in Bangladesh. And maybe let's begin with that. Tell us a bit about BRAC as an organization.

00:01:23 Kuldeep

I think BRAC is one of the few organizations that started from the global South, originated from here, and then proved its mettle where it mattered and then went away and did things all across the globe. And it's journey starts with the country, the journey of Bangladesh. Which is very fascinating. When East Pakistan became Bangladesh. You had a massive sort of in the wake of that independence, it wasn't all nice and glorious. The war itself caused 2 million people to die. And then you had there's this thing called– it was just not a lot of people. I found out when I came to Bangladesh that there was this thing called the intellectual massacre that happened where, as the Pakistani army left. Bangladesh. They killed an entire generation of lawyers, engineers doctors, nurses, the politicians, the more than the politician, the philosophers the idea centers of the country.

And I think that kind of pushed back. In the time in the 70s, when you think that India was growing up and being bigger, that pushed by Bangladesh by another, I think, couple of decades, I think at that particular time when there was really a reeling system BRAC started its own journey in 1972. And then started as a relief organization, and then afterwards, BRAC transitioned into becoming the development organization.

And, the founder, Fazle Hasan Abed is also– very few Global South leaders that you can look up to, right? And then he's there and come, me coming into BRAC was one of the reasons was to really be seeing someone from my own part of the world. Leading those efforts and scaling the idea and now in its height BRAC has 60, 000 like schools we have 50, 000 community health care workers more than a hundred thousand, family, massive family that does development and now has fallen into humanitarian crisis.

And it's also one of the biggest social enterprises in Bangladesh. A majority of the funding of BRAC as an NGO comes from the the profits. That from its enterprise and only certain percentages dependent on donor funding. So it's a model that I think can be is a shining light from South Asia.

00:04:13 Lars Peter

Yeah. And not only is it a model in terms of the impact it has and the innovative way it has been working, it's also been hugely successful in terms of scale, I believe it is the world's largest NGO today, isn't it?

00:04:26 Kuldeep

There's a saying from the founder that small is beautiful, but scale is necessary. And I think in, sometimes, come now in 2024, I'd say like small is beautiful and small is also necessary. And also I don't distinguish as such between, but then at that, we have to go back to where we started, where the sort of massive challenges that there were, which where you couldn't just look at a particular community and invest resources. You had to scale it up because the poverty was at scale, the challenges were at scale and then the health crisis was at scale. So that's the DNA of BRAC. Scale is an important element.

00:05:13 Lars Peter

And you work in the social innovation lab. Tell us what it is that inside this massive organization, how many staff are you? And what do you do?

00:05:24 Kuldeep

Compared to BRAC, we're a very small team. The social innovation lab was envisioned as a unit that would essentially act as a catalyst for the entire organization through its entire verticals to be, to push the boundaries, to be more innovative.

As organizations grow, there is a tendency to be, to feel safe in the continuous sort of success. If you look at BRAC, it's got massive sort of resources and funding through different generous donors. And, we also have to think all those strategy partnership agreement with we have, I wish to have with multiple ones, multiple donor agencies where we pooled money and then did our own sort of program management, meaning that we were the trust level between the organization and the such that, the developing agencies trusted BRAC and still do trust BRAC to do its own programming.

In that sort of sense, you'd also BRAC has to actively think about how to not be in the safe space and be in a comfort zone and go always traditional, right? So it did not come out of a reactionary nature of BRAC's slow, and it's becoming slow, and we now have to intervene, but it's more of a proactive thinking from the founder and his leadership. I think in 2012 that at a time when innovation– I think the core humanitarian and developer innovation really started thriving since 2015. And but then you see that early in 2011 and 12, that those conversations came in. And that was championed by our executive director now who believed that, in a unit like an innovation lab, it might be small, but it has a team of young people with a particular set of mindset and openness, as well as not a lot of baggage of development, the traditional development angle. So we have a diverse team from business development, research design partnership, what that means is that. And none of them have studied, from what I know, business or development studies before they came in.

00:07:49 Lars Peter

So what would you say are some of the biggest successes that this innovation lab or this little incubator inside brick? Well, what have you achieved?

00:07:58 Kuldeep

The social innovation lab started with the concept of sort of internal innovation management and mainstreaming innovation under different programs at BRAC. So what we do is essentially, we don't have a standalone idea as such that is scaled up, but what we do is we develop those seeds and we incubate it a little bit with the programs. With because without program, you can't scale. Meaning that our support is in making sure we follow different human centered design principles.

We follow clear service design sort of philosophies. And work with programs to scale things. So one of the first major scaling grant that we had was from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, where we took a task of setting up hundreds of thousands of digital payments accounts for women in Bangladesh in rural parts of the country, and mainstream because was BRAC also invested in has invested in to bring digital financial services to hundreds of thousands of women in, in Bangladesh, in rural parts of Bangladesh. We've started a massive youth platform movement in BRAC, which started as a small youth change makers network.

inside social innovation lab. And then we transitioned that to become a BRAC youth platform, which now has 20, 000 young people all across the country. What we have also done is we've supported in BRAC in building enterprises. We built, we worked with the core design team of the BRAC health program, as well as BRAC enterprise program to develop BRAC healthcare, which is now.

Being introduced as a urban healthcare sort of enterprise for the lower middle class and the middle class population, which, typically have challenges with accessing good healthcare.

00:10:05 Lars Peter

So it's really a mix between taking technology from the outside and ensuring that's adapted into the organization in a good way, as you mentioned with the payment technology. It's also good ideas you get internally in the organization, like the youth platform that you then help scale. And then it's actually also systemic innovation.

How do we change the business model that BRAC operates with? So that's fairly comprehensive in terms of innovation.

00:10:33 Kuldeep

Yeah. When you're at the middle of it, it becomes task by task. Yeah. But when you look into it from a different vantage point, that we've done all of that, but we've done more we've worked with innovators to localize their product and service for Bangladesh for, and with BRAC and if possible, and then.

The other thing that we're also doing is we're through the innovation lab, we're also not just shying, we're also going to the frontier technology elements. We are I was through BRAC, I was also, I'm also a fellow at the Ethereum Foundation, and one of the things that I did was develop an alternative sort of modality of data management system for BRAC for using decentralized ID systems using digital tokens to enable sort of quality assurance in the field using blockchain and creating transparency in aid.

And then on the other side, also promote local manufacturing through digital fabrication technologies, working with fab labs and maker spaces to enable distributed manufacturing of humanitarian aid instead of the traditional centralized one. And all of these things are also at the cutting edge of the humanitarian sector and development sector. And they still yet have to come to grips with it.

00:11:50 Lars Peter

It sounds great, Kuldeep. And it sounds like you really are on the cutting edge of the development of the humanitarian and development space. At the same time, I also know that an integral part of innovation is failure. So would you like to tell us about some of the things that really didn't work and that you don't want to do again?

00:12:08 Kuldeep

Yeah, there have been massive failures. The success rate on innovation is fairly low, limited. It actually also depends on which stage of innovation or is that solution in and where you take in say you will have a lot of failures in the invention stage of, the innovation management work when you're trying to build quick prototypes that just doesn't work.

And then you had to strip the whole thing up. And then you also, as the innovation moves from invention to adaptation, you have to build more evidence, then you realize that, oh, this solution works in its particular sandbox environment, but when you pilot it, it doesn't work in scale at all. And then the biggest failures are when you, this has passed through and then when you're trying to scale it up in the adoption stage when nobody adopts the solution.

So that is the challenge. We've had failures in both. Interestingly, the Social Innovation Lab actually releases a failure report every year. So we have a, so and it's like a, not just a so failure of social innovation lab, but entire organization. So it's called the BRAC Failure Report which is a catalog of different failures in any every year that we have. And I think the list is very comprehensive. One of the things that, I'll say one thing that has failed in terms of also when we designed it, probably the user. And the assumptions kind of field was when we tried to introduce a saving scheme for women in rural Bangladesh using digital payments.

We build a game. We did a lot of really good design. But then interestingly, there were challenges both in sort of good data collection work, but then that linking the linking that evidence that, okay, this could really help women to save. So even though there was a lot of investment in trying that out, but that probably and then there are other things we've also failed.

And as an organization, we've set up enterprises that have failed or also, set up set. And whenever BRAC closes something, it's not just interesting. There's not just always about, okay, it's failed, but I think it's run its time of being relevant. I think sustainability is both about fun revenue generation, but it's also about being relevant.

I feel like BRAC has been very smart in terms of realizing when to reinvent things and when to let go of things. If it's if it's past its relevance. So, I think that allows BRAC to get more change and evolve more.

00:14:57 Lars Peter

Now when I look at some of the I NGO's I know and how they work with innovation, I'm not that impressed. It seems to me that especially very, very large sort of heavy operational agencies has a hard time really accepting the rhythm of innovation into that sort of project cycle management logic that they have.

00:15:20 Lars Peter

How has it been to work as this little creative designers, engineers, social entrepreneurs inside a massive, massive organization can you get you get traction? Are you frustrated with the bureaucracy? I mean, it's a huge organization.

00:15:36 Kuldeep

I think one of the things that really gets you, that really hits you at the start, it destroys whatever sort of ego that you had as a designer that, you think that, in your mind that, okay, this would work.

You think your assumptions are perfect and then you go to the ground and then it all falls apart. Your ego is removed every other month or so when you hear that track and then that's very humbling as a designer.

And then blame. There is this tendency always in the innovation sector when to blame the user for your own design failures and for your assumption failures. And one thing that we don't do a lot in the sector is test assumptions before building anything. And I think that is a major point of inflection where if the assumptions don't hold true, then the designs are bad inherently.

But at a break, there are challenges on a couple of layers. One is that we have to build our own social capital, we're a young team a series of mostly generalists got some specialty because of interests and you must also shift from one program to the other quite often in terms of support.

So, that means you must be well versed in the one understanding the field. How things work so that you can then plug things in the field operations. And the other is also to have the depth of knowledge as the sector specialist to be able to talk with them in terms of design and strategy.

So that requires a massive challenge. And over the past many years, we've had a lot, a lot of ups and downs where we didn't get any sort of support from the programs. Didn't get a lot of demand from it. But then we've also had good periods where I think we've also gained demand. The challenge is when the organizations and team members feel that I might be stuck, so there's a fire somewhere. Then I feel like that's the high and lows when something is really visibly not right. And people inside the organization want to change. That's I think where, when we are at right now.

00:18:05 Lars Peter

And you personally, what's your secret sauce in terms of building credibility with these decision makers you meet? What's the key to being successful there for you in the way you approach it?

00:18:19 Kuldeep

We have the advantage of being from a generation that got a lot of knowledge audio- visually, as well as reading. What that means is that if I can, and having access to internet generation, meaning the means that if you want to– if you're assigned a program, if you're assigned a sector to work in, your learning curve for that sector is very low. Like we're not as much because let's say in that period of time, you have taken six months now with the wealth of information that is available to us.

And if you have the sort of the mind that I need to learn this stuff, I need to understand the good, bad and ugly of things, not just the propaganda, but also the back-end stuff. You've got Twitter, you've got, you've got feedback from all the different sources right now. I think taking that and immersing yourself in a in a sector within a short period of time.

That sort of mental muscle has been developed in our generation that has consumed we go into YouTube binges where we look, try to learn everything that interests us, let's say, like an alien story, right? You'd go to the ends of the earth to investigate that. And then different perspective comes in as you go along the story and you read books, you read magazines, you can go back to the videos. I think that sort of learning environment is something that I have tried to put back, put in my line of work.

00:19:52 Lars Peter

So you are in quite a unique position. You work for the world's biggest NGO, you sit in this little startup inside the NGO, you, I'm sure you can see across the organization, quite a few things.

The organization you work for is not only the world's biggest NGO, it's also an NGO that has moved beyond the borders of Bangladesh and works in Asia and in Africa. From that point of view, what does localization mean for you? We talk so much about localization. In the sector is something that's important. Where does BRAC fit in that?

00:20:29 Kuldeep

So BRAC has this had the slogan called, I think in our 50 years of founding was from Bangladesh to the world. And that meant that. The initial things that really, were successful at scale in Bangladesh. We wanted to see if we could bring that to the rest of the world.

And so, the idea there is that, if BRAC would then function like any other NGO BRAC started as a national NGO. That worked in Bangladesh, meaning that it's didn't it didn't start at a charity that started in you in the West world and then had to start its operation in different countries when BRAC is trying to scale up into other countries. That is a potential of becoming the person you don't like, at the end

00:21:33 Lars Peter

Yeah, I'm sure you have seen from BRAC’s side, a lot of good practices from partners coming in, but surely also some pretty bad ones. That would be my qualified guess. And I would think that it would be front and center in your thinking, not to become one of those guys when you move beyond the borders.

00:21:50 Kuldeep

Yeah, exactly. Not to become one of, not to fall into that sort of mode of thinking. So I, so that is where localization comes in. I think BRAC has – the foundational element of any any sort of program scaling at BRAC beyond Bangladesh is that it must be completely local and locally driven.

There might be some leadership points, but majority of the one, the majority of the staff from the get go are the local staff and then there is a lot of really ideological exchange that happens between the country's staff as well as the sort of the– Bangladesh there is in, there is visits that we enable to see how Bangladesh work, the problem that is faced so that the BRAC international staff is also there and that, that exchange is, double, right? It's– how do you say– it's vice versa exchange

00:22:49 Lars Peter

If I hear you correctly, what you're saying is if BRAC goes out and set up BRAC, Uganda, wherever you are, really what you bring is not so much funding and staff. It is a way of working, it's thinking, and that you don't just try to inspire the Ugandan setup, but also have the Ugandan setup inspire BRAC in Bangladesh.

00:23:11 Kuldeep

And I think the, what the strategy that has been followed is– Our microfinance wing is always there beside which is the most more successful interventions of BRAC, and that becomes the community outreach foundation through which then we capitalize through other sort of development projects and development programs, and in BRAC Uganda, you could see then a humanitarian intervention as well. To people saying that, okay when was this– at what point did you think that localization was necessary? Was it when you really had good intentions of localizing or was it when resources became limited? I think what that means is that the designs don't have time to mature. Because, this localization is investment, localization takes time and time is also investment.

And if localization idea comes in at the later end of the intervention, then it won't have the breathing space to iterate itself. And then only one end perspective of localization is always followed and materialized. And then that localization then transforms into being an administrative localization.

Where the localization is not about capacity building, but it's about the ability and capacity to fill up the documents and the due diligence capacity of the organization, the administrative localization happens, but not the ideological localization has not happened. There is a gap in ambition, I would say. That humanitarian agencies are focused on the basics: This is our job, to give 20 liters of water – the basics. And then we try to maintain that status quo for as long as possible. And that is why humanitarian innovation struggles. “I just want the basics to be accessible for everyone”. And thinking that humans in the humanitarian response, the people who are suffering don't have ambitions beyond that is acutely misguided. People will have need for water, shelter, but then that need is – like, that's the foundation. There are more desires that are–

Lars Peter:

Yeah, it's not the end state. It is what obviously needs to be in place so we can get down to business.

Kuldeep:

Exactly. But I think, if we do not allow the refugees or the humanitarian, like our users to not, to just get stuck, forcibly stuck for four or five years, That is actively degrading their development sort of pathway. A clear example is the Rohingya response where the basics are being met perfectly now. After five years the humanitarian response is like clockwork. But that clockwork is not moving things forward. That clockwork is keeping things as it is.

Lars Peter:

So tell me, how is BRAC working differently in the Rohingya camps?

00:27:16 Kuldeep

Yeah, so one of the things that BRAC has done is again champion localization on a massive scale we've brought in Gone to the global space, brought in major agencies the GAC and example for example, like GAC and others, like you Australian aid as well to focus on adding humanity development sector projects as well into the future humanitarian response, like skills development.

00:27:47 Lars Peter

So you go to the Canadians and the Australians, and you lobby them to not just do humanitarian work, but also really integrate the Nexus, the development aspect in–

00:27:59 Kuldeep

And then we are also supporting local NGOs in building their capacity. By pooling funds, it's called the– it's a localization approach of giving resources as well as training and support and mobilization of kind of guidance to local organizations so that they can work in practice, take up the mantle of the challenge that is the Rohingya refugee response.

Now imagine that five years ago where still 800 million were coming into Cox's Bazar. Imagine if things were started then...that is my sort of gripe: when there is little to no manufacturing happening in Cox's Bazaar for the humanitarian aid items and all that resource is gone to some few numbers of people instead of using the funding for as much as social surplus as possible through local manufacturing local contracting. That is too little compared to what it can be. And there will be always the sort of questions of what we want as a consumer. The sector is a consumer, we consume in large numbers so we cannot depend on local manufacturing, but I mean, at least try to go up to 30% try to go up to 20% if not 10% like none of that is happening like it's not even 5%. So that means that there's a clear sort of the easiest pathway that the humanitarian organizations have taken in localization in sort of not just of human resources and capacity, but also manufacturing supplies, humanitarian aid items, the type of aid that is given.

You know we see the other camps beside there is a massive market of refugee humanitarian aid items. It's not, it's become an open secret where, you know, almost, a lot of the, I think there have been actually even studies about it for the lack of it. The majority of humanitarian aid is sold in the black market because those products are not designed for them. And then that is about only about, keeping the status quo, but not, does not look at what people would want after having those basics met, what are their ambitions? Where do they want to do more? What are their interests and needs?

00:30:37 Lars Peter

It sounds fantastic, Kuldeep, but of course, in, in the back of my skeptical mind is that I, we talk sometimes about big aid on this show and show how some of the really big organizations don't really, they're not very responsive actually to the needs of the people is one-size-fits-nothing sort of an approach. To what extent is BRAC, have they become big aid?

00:31:03 Kuldeep

I would say that we're trying to actively get away from that urge of big aid. I would say it is an extremely attractive option to be a traditional big aid organization where you would then not have to worry about changing the design as much as you want as making it as human centered as possible.

And not focus too much on organizational efficiency, but on the impact. And then keep things not as a machine, but an organic sort of developed organization. That is, again, an easier pathway. Big aid is an easier pathway, I'd say. The harder pathway we've taken is to not be that, actively not try to be that, or actively defeat, or get away from that urge.

00:32:00 Lars Peter

So how the heck do you do that?

00:32:02 Kuldeep

As organizations get big, the local is not local anymore. BRAC, I would say at this moment, is not how I would categorize a community-based organization. Infrastructurally it is reaching households but ideologically might not be as close, or closest, to those local communities. And not might not always be tapped into those voices.

00:32:40 Lars Peter

You talk about localization. To what extent do the populations you serve play a role in decision making and design of the projects and how much is it the experts from BRAC? I'm sure they are fantastic coming out and rolling out their programs, how much space do you have to actually have a truly participatory design process of the programs?

00:33:06 Kuldeep

I think we have shown examples of true participatory design process. The ultra poor graduation program of BRAC is one of the most successful programs around the world in taking people out of out of poverty the ultra poor layer of poverty.

The challenge I think is more in traditional development. Those unique projects of BRAC have those inbuilt that sort of extremely participatory approach, extremely evidence driven design. And then the sort of organizations always trying to take that ethos and then bring that to the traditional development where things don't fit in always quite easily that– that is a challenge.

The localization, unless– I'm not just talking about BRAC here– in every other development sector or humanitarian sector, the organization the power dynamics have shifted like massively. The frontline workers on the ground who are the spearhead of the ideas of design, like the projects that we design, they are the ones that are the true touch point to our clients.

They are not, they're sometimes fearful of the job. They don't– for them, a task is so important to complete for participation that, because that is the monitoring and evaluation metric that we set, the numbers, the process is not investigated. We don't investigate how it was done and then its participation...

00:35:00 Lars Peter

And I think we've all seen this, right? There are such power structures at play and people are so nervous about losing their jobs. That, in the best intentions, and of course to keep their job, they do what the boss tells them. And then sometimes that ownership and that, that softness of that organic process, which should be there at the frontline to make it truly participatory goes out the window.

00:35:23 Kuldeep

It goes out the window and then it goes up slowly. Like the same mindset, as I think you mentioned a while ago, that it doesn't matter where the hierarchy lies, like that fear is there. Then it's a self perpetuating machine and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy that even though people have good intentions things that come out are not always perfect.

And the other thing where there's a gap is also to really tell designers how easy or difficult the design was to implement in the field. Because that means that how much effort the field staff, the program organizers, the field officer... how easy was it for them to implement it? Was the messaging easy, clear and easily delivered to the client? That feedback is not coming. That feedback comes in the end line report, that feedback comes in probably even is hidden in the end line report.

00:36:22 Kuldeep

Reports from what you've seen many, many times is not even the challenges are we have this fear of even using the word failure. We say, “lessons learned”. And that vocabulary itself comes from the point of an ego that you don't have room for failure. You have just learned the lesson.

00:36:49 Lars Peter

Yeah, it really should be, failures observed.

00:36:52 Kuldeep

Yes, it's no lesson learned. I think we should get to like kind of ban that world in the sector.

00:36:57 Las Peter

This word is hereby banned on Trumanitarian. At least we will not talk about lessons learned anymore.

00:37:03 Lars Peter

We've talked a lot about BRAC and how an institution like that works, but you've worked with many different organizations, you've worked in different countries, you worked with the UN, you worked with some of the big NGOs, you worked with a small H-to-H organization, such as Field Ready. So you have quite wide experience. At the same time, you don't strike me as that person who's afraid of being fired the Monday you go to work after this podcast has come out. I think you tend to speak your mind fairly directly. What is it Kuldeep wants to change? If you had all the power in the humanitarian and development sector, what would Kuldeep do to empower local actors?

00:37:54 Kuldeep

Thank you for the question. My positions are principles based and ideologically based. Sometimes when we talk about sector, we're told to think as enterprises as well, right? But we are not enterprises. There is a reason why humanitarian sector exists. That's catering to the 1 percent of the 10 percent that fall through the cracks and catering to those people that are in need. And then the foundational principles are equality driven, equity driven, as well as not about getting the best bang for buck, but it's about getting the most impact.

00:38:38 Lars Peter

Okay, let me ask you again. So I agree with you: back to basics, purpose driven principles, humanitarian action, and would you give me your top three things you would change if you were the ERC or had all the power in the humanitarian sector?

00:38:54 Kuldeep

OK, let me think about this question a little bit more–

00:39:07 Lars Peter

25 words or less.

00:39:08 Kuldeep

What I actively would try to do is to encourage the entire sector to think one step more than the basics. I think the humanitarian targets must be changed. I think the target should be not just about giving the most basics and making sure people don't die, to people to live well as much as they can in the situation, they are that one step further, designing our interventions will lead to a lot more empathy driven interventions on the ground.

00:39:58 Lars Peter

How do you do that?

00:39:59 Kuldeep

It's hard, but we must... The way to do that is to really have an organizational structure that removes any sort of fear of failure in the implementation layer all the while making sure that we really know why we failed. It's not just about us being incompetent, and then we failed, but we tried our best, but this happened. But then how do we improve on that? So that must be there then there is there needs to be a layer of co-design elements that needs to that sometimes we move out of in the next time.

00:40:48 Kuldeep

Saying that, OK, this is fast, fast-paced. We can't afford time. Time is the enemy of the humanitarian sector. Whereas I feel like if we invest the right amount of time in the early phase of humanitarian response in co designing what we do and what we provide to our users. I think that will reap a long-term benefit towards that. And the last thing that I would do is I would if I had that because I've been working over the past nine years on this is I would localize it as much as possible and get investments from the humanitarian sector to localize it and not just be the dependent on the existing private sector.

If we develop humanitarian, develop that localization, we make everything more efficient, social surplus is there, the carbon footprint of the sector reduces, people get empowered, though there's more bang for the buck. The communities that are hosting the refugees or the victims we'll feel that they are part of the economy.

That is that that is the humanitarian sector that gets betting benefited out of it, social cohesion becomes better, and there will be more jobs in the economy, local economy, as well as. In the refugees and refugee camps.

00:42:05 Lars Peter

So really your answer is first culturally dropping the institutional bullshit and adopt an honest learning approach to what you're doing.

Secondly, hurry slowly is what I hear you saying. And thirdly, put the concept center of gravity of the operation of where you spend your money, of where things are produced, where decisions are made as close to the people affected as possible. And don't fly it in, don't fly bottled water across the world for the tsunami in Indonesia and so on.

00:42:40 Kuldeep

Don't bring Fiji Water to Indonesia from Hawaii.

00:42:44 Lars Peter

I think that's a great place to end our conversation, Kuldeep. It's it's been fascinating to hear your insights both in terms of of the work you do in Bangladesh and the unique role that BRAC plays in yourcountry, also you as a humanitarian professional, your perspective in terms of what needs to change and how we shift the power dynamics in the sector. Thank you so much for coming on Trumanitarian and sharing your experience with us and all the best for your future endeavors.

00:43:17 Kuldeep

Thank you for having me. I think maybe that in future there's opportunities to talk more about other things as well.