Workshop

Prosperity programme working for sustainable poverty alleviation

December 13, 2020

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Finance division senior secretary tells Inception Phase webinar

If people are poor or extreme poor, it is because they lack choices, and Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation (PKSF) is relentlessly working to expand their choices and develop their capacity to come out of poverty, PKSF Chairman Dr Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad said on 9 December 2020.

He was speaking at a webinar organised to share the Inception Year’s progress of Pathways to Prosperity for Extremely Poor People programme being implemented by PKSF with joint funding from UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and European Union.

Abdur Rouf Talukder, Senior Secretary, Finance Division, Ministry of Finance, spoke at the webinar as chief guest while Financial Institutions Division Additional Secretary Arijit Chowdhury, FCDO Development Director Judith Herbertson and EU Head of Delegation to Bangladesh Maurizio Cian were special guests.

The webinar, titled Completion of the Inception Phase of PPEPP Project, was organised by the Project Implementation Unit (PIU) at PKSF.

Popularly known as ‘Prosperity’, the six-year programme is working to lift 10 lakh people belonging to 2.5 lakh households out of extreme poverty by 2025. The programme, launched in April 2019, is covering nearly 200 unions of 43 upazilas in 15 poverty-prone districts of Bangladesh.

People living in these districts face present and future climate shocks that threaten their lives and livelihoods and potentially displace them.

Delivering the welcome speech, PKSF Managing Director Moinuddin Abdullah said, “We are hopeful, confident even, that the Prosperity programme will make significant contributions in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the 7th Five Year Plan of the Bangladesh government, as Bangladesh inches closer to become a middle income country.”

During the first year of the Prosperity programme, more than 30,000 extreme poor households have been brought under its coverage and are now receiving climate-resilient livelihoods as well as nutrition support. The programme is now working to deliver services at the doorstep of the entire 1 million target people.

“It gives me immense pleasure to learn that the [Prosperity] programme’s multidimensional interventions is addressing poverty and its causes in a sustainable way,” Finance Division Senior Secretary Abdur Rouf Talukder said.

At the moment, the programme is distributing about BDT 31 crore among more than 30,000 extreme poor households in response to the Covid-19 pandemic which triggered food shortages in these households as a result of joblessness.

Speaking at the webinar, Judith Herbertson of FCDO and Maurizio Cian of EU acknowledged Bangladesh’s impressive progress in poverty reduction and reiterated their commitment to support poverty alleviation programmes.

High officials of different line ministries and departments, deputy commissioners and Upazila Nirbahi Officers of the programme’s working areas, representatives from development partners and development organisations, extreme poverty experts, academicians and representatives from Partner Organisations also spoke at the webinar.

Watch the recorded Webinar on YouTube: