Two partner organisations of the Prosperity project joined hands to hold an advocacy workshop with the Upazila Department of Women Affairs (UDWA) in Khulna last month.
The workshop was part of the linkage building with local government institutions to ensure extreme poor people’s access to services. Normally, individual partner organisations hold such linkage meetings in their working areas. But this new approach is expected to benefit the participant households better in terms of their accessibility to service.
The workshop, organised by Heed Bangladesh and Ad-Din Welfare Center in Dacope upazila, also discussed ways to include female household members with the UDWA development activities.
Speaking at the workshop, Upazila Women Affairs Officer Suraiya Siddiqua offered assistance regarding the inclusion of vulnerable households in the National Social Safety Net programmes. The UDWA officials also assured the participants of providing maternity allowance and sewing machines to trained female members.
“Upazila Department of Women Affairs officials were very excited about our project and they committed to consider Prosperity project’s female household members for the next batch of their training programmes on fashion designing and food processing,” said Steve Roy, Technical Officer (Community Mobilisation) of Heed Bangladesh.
Linkages with UDWA in different upazilas are expected to create skills development and employment opportunities for female household members under the project.