BSS, Rangpur :
Hundreds of the distressed and landless women, living in remote char areas on the Brahmaputra basin, have changed their fortune through homestead vegetables farming in the recent years.
Side by side conducting other income generation activities with the assistances of the Char Livelihoods Programme (CLP), they achieved the success through cultivating vegetables on tiny homesteads with raised plinths to lead better life now.
Under the comprehensive CLP activities, some 1.06 lakh women-led have-nots group landless char families have achieved self-reliance bidding good-bye to the century-old seasonal ‘monga’ to win over abject poverty since 2004.
According to different sources, the UKaid through the Department for International Development, Australian Government through Australian Agency for International Development and Government of Bangladesh are funding CLP implementation.
Agriculture and Environment Coordinator Mamunur Rashid of RDRS Bangladesh, an implementing partner of CLP, said the programme is being implemented through GO-NGO collaboration on char areas in ten northwestern districts on the Brahmaputra basin.
Over 900,000 people of 55,000 poorest households were benefited under CLP phase-I during 2004-2010 and some 60,000 more households out of 67,000 so far under phase-II (2010-2016) to improve livelihoods of 1.9 million extremely poor char people by 2016.
The CLP has been working with the extremely poor households living on riverine island chars to improve their livelihoods and has raised plinths for 1.06 lakh char families so far in the remote char areas since 2004 in these districts.
The CLP beneficiary women-led distressed char families are being assisted to escape floods through raising plinths and making them self- reliant with various income generations including homesteads gardening.
Senior Agriculture Officer Rabiul Karim of RDRS Bangladesh said the char women achieved the laudable success in homestead vegetables farming with other income generation activities after escaping floods after raising plinths with CLP assistances. Senior Agriculture Officer Rabiul Karim of RDRS Bangladesh said the char women achieved the laudable success in homestead vegetables farming with other income generation activities after escaping floods after raising plinths with CLP assistances.
Project Coordinator of the Community Climate Change Project of RDRS Bangladesh Shafiul Islam said these char women were in abject poverty even a decade ago before taking up homestead vegetables’ farming as the means of survival.
“They have won over the seasonal curse of ‘monga’ to lead a better life now with three- time meal a day, hygienic sanitary facility and their children are going to the schools with a dream for a better life in future,” he added.
CLP beneficiary women Kulsum, Kamola, Aklima, Rahela, Ayesha, Sabiha Sharmeen and Bulbuli of different char villages narrated the unthinkable success they have already achieved through vegetables’ farming on their tiny homesteads.
They are mostly cultivating bean, dhania, pumpkin, sweet gourd, ‘Korola’, ‘Chichinga’, ‘Borboti’, ‘patol’, ‘Kakrol’, ‘Jhinga’, ‘Shosha’, ‘Lau’, brinjal, cauliflower, chilly, ‘Palong’, ‘Lal’ sak and many other vegetables to meet their own demand.
“We are also earning good profits through selling the produced vegetables to the middlemen despite at comparatively lower rates for lack of adequate marketing and preservation facilities in our hardly reachable char areas,” the women said.
