ASA (Association for Social Advancement)  formed as a non-government organisation in early 1978 by a few development workers led by Shafiqul Haque Choudhury, the founder Managing Director. The formation of ASA was the outcome of efforts to create an alternative type of organisation for the benefit of the poor in the belief that the existing top-down development approach was not benefiting those who really needed development.

ASA started as a development NGO through a trial and error method and with close contract with grassroots people and with a relatively radical action agenda. Since 1978, ASA has crossed three basic phases, the foundation phase (1978-84), the reformation phase (19985-1991) and the specialisation phase (from 1992 to till date). During the foundation phase, ASA's interventions were to empower the powerless through conscientisation for social action, legal aid, awareness build-up, rural journalists' development, communication support services and training programme for the poor. The reformation phase included development education for empowerment, credit programme for income generation, mini-irrigation programmes for landless and marginal farmers, women's development, health programmes and training programmes. ASA believes that if an organisation implements several types of programmes, the development process slows down and the results are unimpressive. Specialisation is the only solution to cover the huge number of poor people within a short time. ASA now specialises in micro-finance programmes and is committed to empowering landless and disadvantaged poor villagers, especially women in both urban and rural areas through promoting income generating activities. ASA motivates grass roots poor people to establish a decision-making system in their family and society, organises the poor in groups, conducts awareness development campaigns and helps the poor to identify various issues relating to the violation of human rights.

ASA is basically a two-tier organisation and has its central office in dhaka and branch offices in operation areas. In between the branches and the central office, ASA has two mid-level field supervisory positions. They are the area manager and the divisional manager. The branch office is the basic element of the organisation at the field level for the formation of groups, collection of savings, loan disbursement, and repayment. Each branch has one branch manager and 4 credit officers. One credit officer is responsible for 18 groups, each composed of about 20 members. A mature area consists of 5 branches and a division consists of about 35 branches. ASA has a relatively small central office with about 80 staff including support personnel in Dhaka headed by a Managing Director, who is assisted by four general managers, each having two to three associates ranked deputy or assistant general managers.

The present sources of ASA's micro finance funding in operation are the institution's own funds, members' savings, loans from PKSF, loans and grants from donors and other contributions. ASA does not receive any donor fund since 2001. Up to 31 December 2000, ASA accumulated a total of Tk 5,551.24 million which comprised members' savings 1,607.27 million, PKSF 1,600.00 million, Donors' grant 797.91 million, CORDAID loan 22.09 million, ASA's own 884.8 million and others 639.17 million.

The activities of ASA now cover all 64 districts and the programmes are implemented in 26,400 villages of 4,700 unions of 404 upazilas. It operates through 953 braches and plans to form 97 new branches by December 2001. Up to April 2001, ASA had 1.3 million members and 1.2 million borrowers. The expenditure budget of the organisation in 2001 was Taka 1.2 billion. [Shamsul Huda]