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Finance for Enterprise Development and Employment Creation Project The US$ 57.8 million development project aims at stimulating pro-poor growth to increase employment opportunities and reduce poverty. It started in January 2008 and will run until 2014. FEDEC is designed as a nationwide project with focus on the rural areas. It is implemented and co-financed by the Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation (PKSF), a government apex funding agency for NGOs, and its partner non-governmental organizations who are operating in all 64 districts of Bangladesh. The project focuses on three major activities:
Expected benefits of the project are an increased production from farm and non-farm enterprises, better integration with markets, upgrading of technologies, improved livelihoods for microentrepreneurs and associated employees. Other benefits include improved household food security and nutrition, empowerment of women, access to sustainable financial services for the target group, improved capacity of partner organizations to provide technical services to microentrepreneurs as well as an increase in employment opportunities for rural poor households. Source: IFAD Haor Infrastructure and Livelihood Improvement Project
The project will mainly benefit:
The project will improve the living standards and reduce the vulnerability of the poor by promoting:
Source: IFAD Char Development and Settlement Project IV
Sunamganj Community-Based Resource Management Project
The project's target group includes landless, marginal and small-farmer households and women.
Source: IFAD Participatory Small-scale Water Resources Sector Project This project will develop sustainable small-scale water resource management systems in Bangladesh that will lead to improved crop yields and better livelihoods for about 1.7 million people.
Smallholder Livestock Development Project
Source: IFAD Special Assistance Project for Cyclone Affected Rural Households
The project also helped equip a more effective cyclone early-warning system and constructed ten cyclone shelters in the Kutubdia area. Source: IFAD Agricultural Diversification and Intensification Project
The project piloted a scheme of market operating groups (MOGs). Thirty-five groups were formed from members of microcredit groups ready to increase the scale of their operations. The loans made available to MOG members were significantly larger, enabling them to expand their enterprises, especially where they also received appropriate training. The results of the MOGs revealed that members had increased their incomes substantially because they were able to enlarge the scope of their activities such as producing and marketing eggs and vegetables, or take on additional income-earning activities such as sewing and food processing. Source: IFAD Aquaculture Development Project
Building on experience gained and lessons learned from the IFAD-funded Oxbow Lakes Small-Scale Fishermen Project, this eight-year IFAD-initiated project is working to improve the living standards and village-life conditions of fishing communities and women's groups in the project area, where 49 per cent of all households live below the absolute poverty line. The project focuses on two disadvantaged groups of rural poor people:
Specifically, the project works to boost fisheries and aquaculture production and incomes of people living in poverty. It establishes and strengthen community organizations to ensure that their members have access to bodies of water, and that technical and social services are provided on a sustainable basis. It improves women’s status by including them in the project’s main activity of pond aquaculture and by supporting them in other income-generating activities. The project upgrades the resource base through the rehabilitation of suitable large bodies of water and fish ponds. It facilitates access to and from rural communities by upgrading rural roads, thereby improving marketing possibilities for the inhabitants of the 450 project villages. As a means of empowerment, the aquaculture project has reintroduced the concept of land owned by the community for the benefit of the community. By making it possible for fishers to organize themselves into groups, IFAD enables them to work and manage such waterways directly.
Source: IFAD Smallholder Agricultural Improvement Project
To ensure that project participants have access to credit, the project has established pilot revolving funds (for savings and credit) administered by the community and supported and supervised by suitable NGOs. Private commercial banks are invited to participate in credit supply and to support selected NGOs. The project is also involved in testing six pilot ecological villages, with community biogas plants and energy-saving stoves, to improve village living conditions. The target group includes landless and marginalized people and small farmers, with particular attention to households that are headed by women, adivasi (indigenous families) and charlanders (people living on newly formed riverbanks). About 131,000 households are expected to benefit from the project, including 13,000 adivasis and 5,000 charland households. Project funds for indigenous families are channelled into a development fund for their exclusive use. The project also expects to benefit the entire population of the area by improving basic infrastructure and living conditions.
Source: IFAD National Agricultural Technology Project
By intensifying and diversifying production systems and supporting value chain development, project activities will directly benefit members of farming communities. Activities will bring indirect benefits for landless and other extremely poor people by creating an increased demand for labour. Because of the widespread poverty and overall vulnerability of women, the project focuses on improving women’s access to knowledge and technology. By decentralizing extension services and sharing responsibilities for planning and implementation of activities, the project ensures the participation of poor rural people. Common interest groups of crop, livestock and fisheries farmers will form producers’ organizations and federations. The groups will have a key role in value chain development and particularly in strengthening farmer-market linkages. Source: IFAD Microfinance and Technical Support Project The rural poor people involved in this project have limited access to land in an area affected by extreme yearly flooding. Their vulnerability is increased by dependence on moneylenders, seasonality of income and emergencies caused by illness. In addition, formal government services for rural development at the local level (agriculture, livestock, fisheries) are limited. NGOs are present but mainly provide only savings and credit services. The private sector is growing in importance every year as a result of privatization programmes. The project focuses on mitigating poor people's vulnerability, improving their access to essential services and resources, and supporting their livelihoods, particularly through livestock. Focusing on the promotion of high-value products with established marketing chains that do not require large landholdings, the project provides access to savings and credit services. In line with the draft PRSP, the project is working to improve technical service provision to rural poor people by contracting input supply and service provision through NGOs and the private sector. A programme of skills development is being provided for project participants and NGO staff. To reduce the vulnerability of women, the project enables them to gain access to knowledge and technology, to take control of productive resources, and to acquire leadership and management skills.
Source: IFAD Microfinance for Marginal and Small Farmers Project The goal of this six-year project is to improve the livelihoods of poor, small and marginal farmer households. The project is expected to:
The project area includes 14 districts in the north-western and north-central regions of Bangladesh , selected because they have high levels of poverty and good agricultural potential. The total population of these districts is 28 million, and some 1.7 million will be reached by the project. The project focuses in particular on households that experience a food shortage (less than three meals a day) for more than two months a year, and on especially disadvantaged households (tribal households, those headed by women and those with unemployed youth).
Source: IFAD Market Infrastructure Development Project in Charland Regions Charland is land located in an active river basin that is subject to erosion and accretion. The project includes areas characterized by severe annual flooding and extensive river erosion in the coastal and estuarine chars of Bangladesh . They are home to some of the country's poorest people. The project targets people who produce primarily for the market, including farmers growing crops or raising livestock on small landholdings, fishers and fish farmers and people who engage in non-farm enterprises such as food processing, basket-making and cloth-making. The project also targets small-scale traders, particularly women. Poor people in these areas often depend on landlords and moneylenders, and their income is seasonal. They are vulnerable to emergencies such as death, illness and loss of crops. Many live in remote districts with weak communication links and a lack of government, health and education services. In addition, charland communities have poor road access and limited markets. This IFAD-initiated project will adopt a people-centred approach, identifying potential producer groups in char areas, strengthening their capacity and developing market and communications infrastructure to support them. It will build physical infrastructure such as market facilities and farm-to-market roads while boosting capacity for market management. It will also provide market traders, small business operators and producers with technical and management training and access to credit. The project will specifically promote opportunities for women traders. Building on the success of NGO microcredit programmes in Bangladesh , IFAD will work with experienced NGOs to support group members, mainly women. The project will establish working-level synergies with the Netherlands-funded Char Development and Settlement Project - Phase III and the second phase of the Agricultural Sector Programme Support project funded by Danish International Development.
Source: IFAD Pabna Irrigation and Rural Development Project This, IFAD's first project in Bangladesh, was created to improve the basic infrastructure of one of the most important and vulnerable agricultural areas in the heart of the country. It was designed to increase agricultural production, generate employment and improve farmers' living conditions by providing flood embankments, improving existing channels and installing drainage pumps to protect an area of about 185,000 ha from annual flooding. Source: IFAD Fertilizer Sector Programme The programme's objectives were to support Bangladesh's agricultural development strategy, in particular to rapidly increase food production through quick-yielding measures such as increased fertilizer use. Households with small landholdings were targeted. A principal concern was to improve national availability of fertilizer, which was previously unavailable to poor farmers with small landholdings, the main beneficiaries of the programme. Source: IFAD Small Farmer Agricultural Credit Project This project constituted one of the first concentrated efforts to improve a specific, vulnerable population's ability to work themselves out of poverty by providing supervised credit and by supporting rehabilitation of important infrastructure. The target population consisted mainly of farmers with small holdings of very poor quality land, and small pond owners. The project increased crop and fish production among 70,000 small farmers and 3,000 pond owners. Source: IFAD Southwest Rural Development Project This project addressed development issues in one of most important and densely populated regions in rural Bangladesh. It worked to:
During the course of the project, credit was provided to more than 10,500 poor people, 53 per cent of them women. The project demonstrated that providing credit (together with skills training) to rural poor people is a better investment than providing similar credit to large farmers. Source: IFAD North-West Rural Development Project This project was the counterpart of the Southwest Rural Development Project, addressing many of the same problems in a geographically and demographically different area. The project focused on small farmers organized into village cooperative societies (300,000 families) and landless men and women organized into landless cooperative labour (80,000 people). It worked to achieve the same three objectives as the Southwest Rural Development Project. Source: IFAD Small-Scale Flood Control, Drainage and Irrigation Project In this project IFAD worked with the Government of Bangladesh to increase food grain production, farm incomes and rural employment opportunities. The main activities supported by the project were designed to reduce the depth, intensity and incidence of flooding in order to increase crop yields from one to two harvests per year and to make those harvests more abundant. The project also introduced a new rice variety that produced higher yields. In addition, improved farm technology and management practices were implemented. Source: IFAD |
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