Concern (s-2)

Concern Worldwide logo

Concern Worldwide (Scale Fund): Economic and Social Empowerment of the Extreme Poor (ESEP)

www.flickr.com


Project Area
Sunamgonj and Habigonj districts of Sylhet Division; Kishoregonj district of Dhaka Division.
See the project areas on Google Maps

Partner NGOs
Voluntary Association for Rural Development (VARD), Pally Bikash Kendra (PBK) and Friends in Village Development, Bangladesh (FIVDB).

Target
22,500 Beneficiary Households (BHHs)

Years to graduate
3 years

Budget and Cost per BHH
The total budget is BDT 333,621,846
cost per BHH is BDT 14,828
of which direct delivery cost per BHH is BDT 9,243

Key Aspects

  • Brings together proven interventions for synergy in addressing irregular income, weak asset-base, marginalization and sustainability.
  • Supports extreme-poor to lease land and introduce two crops based on proven pilot (with Bangladesh Agriculture University) of shorter-maturing rice (BR28) plus Challisa Potato/vegetables with inputs/technology, doubling income with ‘group-marketing approach’.
  • Supports extreme-poor for collective leasing of water-bodies for fishing with market-linkage.
  • Supports alternative/additional income opportunities, e.g. livestock-rearing (duck, geese) in monsoon and specific handicraft production proven appropriate for haor with market-linkage.
  • Addresses marginalization, promotes asset accumulation, protection and sustainability via formation of proven gender and economically empowering Self-Help-Group(SHG)/apex-body platforms (CBOs) using savings for re-investment and risk reduction, adopting proven model for bank-loan access and accessing government services, unifying groups to negotiate with officials/elites for accessing safety-net schemes for vulnerable (physically challenged/elderly) and to common-resources.
  • Encourages creativity via youth involvement in SHG/CBOs, introducing ICT for market and value-chain access and pricing/business-planning decisions.

Outputs

  • Output 1: Extreme poor HHs sustainably engaged in cultivation of tested cropping patterns on small lease holdings using new technologies.
  • Output 2: Extreme poor sustainably operating other income options
  • Output 3: Local government institutions (LGIs) and departments are responsive to the needs of the extreme poor in resource allocation and other services
  • Output 4: Apex bodies of Self-Help Groups (CBOs) facilitated and made operational.

See the works of SHIREE funded project of Concern Worldwide on flickr

 


Comments are closed.