Battling poverty with World Vision

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Mohammad Wazed Ali back from Dinajpur | Published: June 06, 2016 00:00:00 | Updated: June 05, 2016 23:18:00

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Babulal Das (36), a resident of Birampur in Dinajpur district, used to lead poor life three/four years back. Even he could not manage three meals a day for his family consisting of three members. 

At the same time, he didn't have a house to properly accommodate his wife and girl. Even he could not meet their basic needs. 

"In fact, my sufferings knew no bounds. I could not meet even a little portion of basic requirements with my scanty income. So, I was in a fix and didn't know what to do," Babulal said.

But his fate has started changing since 2012 when World Vision Bangladesh, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), came up with its varied assistance schemes. 

The NGO first provided him with a tin-made house and later with a cow with a view to making him economically self-reliant. The ultimate objective was to ensure the wellbeing of his baby girl Anita, now a student of Class I at Proyagpur Child Education Centre.

"I would like to express my gratitude to the organisation as they provided me with assistance to be economically self-reliant. Most importantly, now I am not concerned over the future of my child. I want to fulfil the dream of my child," Babulal told this correspondent.

Like Babulal, many others in the locality received such assistance to change their fate. At least 500 families have benefited enormously from these assistance schemes.

Besides Birampur upazila, a good number of families under Aladipur, Eluary, Betdighi, Kazihal unions in Phulbari upazila now lead comfortable lifestyle due to different development projects undertaken by the NGO. 

The poor families benefit greatly from two of the projects - milk value chain and duck value chain - which have helped them to alleviate their extreme poverty and raise their living standards.

The milk value chain project consists of 20 groups and each group has 25-30 members. Under this scheme, one collects milk from every door on a daily basis which ensures fair price of produced milk, help producers save time, promote savings and ultimately contribute to the overall development of the locality.

Sakhina Begum, one of the beneficiaries, said the milk value chain project influenced their lifestyle by ensuring fair price, saving time, saving from market fluctuation through a stable price rate and more importantly ending sufferings to go to remote markets to sell milk.

The NGO-funded duck value chain project also changed the fate of a number of poor people. Moriom Begum and Rowsan Ara, two of the beneficiaries, are now running a duck farm having 900 ducks. 

Moriam said even two years back, the condition of her family was very miserable as her husband's income was not sufficient to meet basic requirements of the five-member family.

"Apart from my husband's income, I can earn Tk 7,000-Tk 9,000. We have built a new house and we can eat three meals a day. Our daughter goes to school and we hope we will be able to lead a prosperous life in near future," Moriam added.

World Vision Bangladesh, a branch of World Vision International, is implementing these projects - Birampur and Phulbari Area Development Programs (ADP). 

When asked, Managers of Birampur and Phulbari ADP Liton Mondol and Pabitra Costa said in last few years they have made efforts in ensuring development for the locality especially economic development, education, health and sanitary related issues and promotion of children's education.

wazeddu@yahoo.com