Development Organization of the Rural Poor (DORP)

Development Organization of the Rural Poor-DORP a national Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) has been working in the development field for more than 2 decades in Bangladesh. The experiences of the organization are not confined to a specific field, but rather diverse in action. The pioneer and founder of the organization is the first generation development activist in the country, along with his companions who have also long experience in different areas of development.

The present Chief Executive and Founder of DORP, AHM Nouman was directly involved in the relief and rehabilitation program and the Bishwa Gram project as a pioneer and architect. Later on, realizing the importance and indispensability of self-help and self-reliance in promoting sustainable development, he along with a few other pioneers, established the well-known Swanirvar Bangladesh, one of the leading self-reliance promoting NGO in the country. Working with this mission for a long time, they realized the change in the social and economic situation of the country and felt to transform the development sector through a bottom-up approach, while people from rural areas of the country were the focal group of development. Eventually, in 1987, AHM Nouman with other like-minded professional rural development actors established DORP for achieving sustainable development through self-reliance.

Thus, DORP became an organization of a set of social workers with adequate educational and technical expertise including grass root people, with local-level experiences in the areas of integrated development. Its participatory approach was a method of practice from the very beginning of the organization. In DORP’s evolution process, it has experimented with various approaches and undertaken some action-oriented research to identify the direction of its programs with the active participation of people specially the poor, women and riverine belt inhabitants as program partners.