Livelihood Sustainability through Community Development Project: A Case of Rural Bangladesh

Abstract

Community Driven Development (CDD) has been at the heart of many developing countries in trying to reduce the development gap between rural and urban populations. Based on this approach, Bangladesh government took a number of development projects in the late 1980s and 1990s but most of them found incomplete and further initiatives did not take to extend these projects on a sustainable basis. In 2009 Government of Bangladesh initiated Amar Bari Amar Khamar previously known as ‘One House One Farm’ project for the promotion of rural disadvantaged and poor farm families and to uplift their social status as well as reducing poverty and inequality with the vision of sustainable development through fund mobilization and farming. The prime objective of this study is to explore the status of ‘Amar Bari Amar Khamar’ project in community rural development with a critical look at how the project is addressing the hard-core poor community needs within the DFID Sustainable Livelihood Framework. This study has been conducted by using secondary data which included project reports up to June 2018, internet-based publications, government documents and some research reports. It has been found that the project has positive impact on comprehensive and sustainable financial inclusion of over 3 million population and create permanent fund worth of near about 48 billion Taka to be used generation after generation, made 168,750 skilled man power by providing trade-based training, conducting regular court yard weekly meeting for ensuring development initiatives as participatory and bottom up in nature, create 2.307 million mini/ family farms by investing 50 billion Taka (approx.). Besides, digitization of the total process of project management and fund management is ensuring transparency and accountability by reduced corruption and operational time, 0.346 billion Taka has been invested in SMEs through 6,920 graduated members. In spite of enormous efforts still there exist some practical problems which could be minimized by using the spirit and values of Saemaul Undong approach of South Korea in improving present condition.