The Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation (PKSF) has moved to undertake a project aiming to promote income and employment generation opportunities for the extreme poor people in rural Bangladesh, officials said.
The Department for International Development (DFID) will provide 75 million GBP and arrange 20 million GBP from the European Union to implement the five-year project, scheduled to start next year. The British government may consider the second phase of the project to be launched in 2022 depending on the project progress and performance, they added.
The project titled 'Pathways to prosperity for the extreme poor (PPEP)' aims at eradicating extreme poverty and supporting national policies and plans to provide the extreme poor and vulnerable households with proper services.
Officials said the project will provide a greater focus on market development and off-farm income generating activities, emphasis on community mobilisation to access basic services and address social norms which exclude certain households or individuals, and investment in nutrition to lay foundation for productive work.
The project also aims to lift 2.0 million people out of extreme poverty and enable them to take concrete steps towards sustained prosperity through an integrated package of livelihoods, markets, nutrition and social development support.
Once implemented, the project will help nearly 500,000 households to come out of extreme poverty and make significant progress along a pathway towards prosperity, 867,000 children under five, women of childbearing age, and adolescent girls will be reached with a package of nutrition-related interventions, and 250,000 women will experience a significant change in their social status.
It will also help increase resilience to climate change and other shocks for 500,000 extreme households.
An official at the ministry of finance (MoF) told the FE that sustainable development goal (SDG) of the United Nations (UN) has targeted ending of extreme poverty by 2030. People living on less than US$ 1.25 are considered extreme poor.
The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) in its household income and expenditure survey 2010 defined persons having per capita income of Tk 36.76 per day as extreme poor.
The seventh five-year plan estimation suggests that some 16 to 20 million people in Bangladesh live in extreme poverty of which around three-quarters live in rural areas.
The first phase of the project will be implemented in 30 sub-districts of Lalmonirhat, Kurigram, Satkhira, Khulna, Bagerhat, Patuakhali, Bhola, Kishoreganj, Habigaj, Sunamganj, Netrakona, and Khagrachari districts.
Under the project, the poor people will be given basic skills training, technology transfer and access to grant or soft loan to enable each household invest in a productive asset or other livelihood strategy, and will be helped to grow a micro-enterprise, diversify income sources or invest in alternative income opportunities.
© 2024 - All Rights with The Financial Express
