Nuton Jibon for the Rural Poor

DHAKA, July 14 (NsNewsWire) — The Empowerment and Livelihood Improvement “Nuton Jibon” Project is in line with Government of Bangladesh’s vision of pro-poor growth and human development.
The project covering 3262 villages in 16 districts has been improving rural extreme poor peoples’ livelihoods and quality of life. The project especially targets extreme hard core poor and vulnerable people that are often left out from development interventions.
More than 2.5 million people in the poorest and disaster prone districts of Bangladesh have embarked on a new life and benefitted from community infrastructure and productive investments. As of March 2014, over 550,000 hard core poor and poor households have been mobilized into over 45,000 Nuton Jibon groups. Some 386,000members of these groups have accessed Shabolombi Fund loans for productive and meaningful income generating activities.
An Impact Assessment study was conducted in September 2013. The study found that about 35% of the project households have been able to increase their income by 40 to 50%. About 78% of households in project villages are directly benefiting from community infrastructures sub-projects which have increased their access to social services.

Through the project, about 36,950 youth have benefited from skills development training, of which the majority has found employment. More than 35,000 most vulnerable have received a one-time grant and 95% of them are participating in internal lending or Shabolombi Fund loans.

The project benefits from the solid momentum on governance and accountability tools already built-in its design. This includes Community Assessment Process, Social Audit, Village Matrix, Village Score Card, Third Party Process Monitoring, community complaint redress mechanism and web based MIS system. This has resulted in strong participation, transparency, accountability and equity throughout the project implementation.

Finally, as the livelihood activities become more meaningful with the emerging community federations, the project will ensure that close linkages are developed for improved access to the financial sector and markets. source: World Bank statement.