Welcome and a Happy New Year 2020
Dear reader,
Warm greetings from Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation (PKSF). We wish you and your family a great year ahead. We are delighted to share the first e-newsletter of Pathways to Prosperity project with you.
Pathways to Prosperity, jointly funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the European Union (EU), is one of the largest extreme poverty reduction programmes in Bangladesh. The Project has been conceived with a lot of expectations and we are committed to realising these expectations, and thereby building a better, more prosperous Bangladesh.
We understand that this multidimensional project will generate a vast amount of knowledge about the extreme poor in Bangladesh and what works for them and what does not. Instead of keeping this invaluable insight to ourselves, we intend to share it with a larger audience via different platforms so that this knowledge can be used in other poverty reduction efforts. This e-newsletter is one such platform that will bring you regular updates about our work.
Because the Project is still in its Inception Phase, we are bringing out this e-newsletter on a pilot basis. We will appreciate any suggestions and feedback.
Happy reading!
Sincerely,
AQM Golam Mawla
Deputy Managing Director, PKSF
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A comprehensive report on the Prosperity project by Maasranga Television following the launching of piloting of the Project on 1 October 2019.
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The Pathways to Prosperity for Extremely Poor People (PPEPP) project builds on past successful livelihood graduation programmes [including Programmed Initiatives for Monga Eradication (PRIME), Chars Livelihood Programme (CLP), Economic Empowerment of the Poorest (EEP), Targeting the Ultra Poor (TUP) and Food Security 2012 Bangladesh Ujjibito project] but it goes deeper. It adds fresh features to address barriers that stop the poorest people from pulling themselves out of poverty; make it more cost-effective; and, ensure that it is sustained after the eventual exit of the DFID and the EU that are jointly funding the Project.
The Pathways to Prosperity project will support extremely poor people (primarily women) to connect them with the mainstream economic growth. It will also try to build the national systems that are needed to support public and private investment in extreme poverty programmes and basic services like health and education. A strong lever of this programme is that, in contrast to earlier interventions, this Project will be delivered largely through the PKSF.
It will also be partially funded (£150 million in soft loans) by PKSF over the course of the programme in two phases.
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The Project aims to lift some 2 million people of 0.5 million households out of extreme poverty in two phases. In the first phase (2019-2025), the Project will directly serve 1 million people of 153 unions under 41 Upazilas in 15 districts located in three poverty-prone pockets -- North West Region, South West Coastal Belt, and North East Haor Region. These areas are also most vulnerable to climate change impacts.
For more information, please visit www.ppepp.org
What will the Project do?
Pathways to Prosperity is a multidimensional project that will not only address the livelihood opportunities for extreme-poor people but will also address other deep-rooted causes of poverty such as lack of nutrition, disability, gender disparity, and climate vulnerability.
The Project will provide multidimensional interventions that exert positive outcome on asset pentagon of an extreme-poor household. Ultimately, it will build resilience of extreme-poor households by enabling them to withstand or absorb sudden or chronic shock and to manage or maintain the basic functions and structures leading to the pathways to prosperity.
In all, the Project will provide interventions in nine areas.
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Working Area
The Prosperity project will work in different geographical and socio-economic contexts in Bangladesh which include:
North West Region that has riverine chars and districts along the banks of the Teesta and the Brahmaputra rivers;
South West Coastal Belt that faces periodic cyclones, tidal surge, salt-water intrusion and chronic waterlogging; and
North East Haor Region that has a specific ecosystem, presenting a very limited range of livelihood options as it remains under the water for nearly six months every year.
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Events
In the Inception Phase, the Project has organised a range of events both at PKSF and at Partner Organisation (PO) levels.
You can find news on all the events on the Project website.
Some key events are as follows.
- DFID and ERD sign MoU 17 Dec 2018
- PKSF and Finance Division (Finance Ministry) sign MoU 5 Mar 2019
- DFID and PKSF sign MoU 31 Mar 2019
- One-year Inception Phase begins 1 Apr 2019
- Piloting of the Project launched 1 Oct 2019
- Partner selection completed for implementation phase in all the programme areas
- Training of Trainers (ToT) held at partner and PKSF levels
- Exposure visits held at PO level
Apart from the Project events, it's worth mentioning about the Development Fair organised by PKSF.
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Despite the profound success in poverty reduction over the last four decades, why is Bangladesh still home to some 36 million poor and about 18 million extreme poor living in certain pockets?
There is no single answer to this question, but two key factors are likely involved. i) Geographical – these poverty-prone pockets are located in hard-to-reach areas; ii) Social factors – many of these people are excluded from society because of their ethnicity, occupation the way of living etc.
They are often ignored and left alone, and their stories are seldom told. But, the Team Prosperity, will make every effort to bring the stories of their struggle as well as their aspiration to the forefront under the section “Stories from the Field: The Many Faces of Extreme Poverty".
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In our first e-newsletter, we tell the story of Bhola’s agents of change who hold hope for young and old alike.
Sometimes, courage and determination can come from the unlikeliest of the places. Meet Bhola’s Kishori Club members who are fighting child marriage, dowry, stalking in their area even after UPP-Ujjibito, an EU-funded project under which the club was set up, ended.
Read more ...
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