Improvement of Hardcore Poor Families Regarding Empowerment & Livelihood: A Comparative Sociological Study of GO & NGOs in Jamalpur District

Abstract

Empowerment and livelihood are the vital and pioneered concepts in Bangladesh. For improving these two concepts, Bangladesh Government has taken different initiatives such as Social Investment Program Project (SIPP); a Government-led initiative is supported by the World Bank. The Social Development Foundation (SDF) has implemented the program to address the extreme poverty as outlined in the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) of the Government of Bangladesh. To ensure the maximum benefit of the extreme poor families, project channels fund at the village level directly. Not only Social Development Foundation but also some NGOs are contributing to the project initiative such as Centre for Natural Recourse Studies (CNRS) & Bangladesh Disaster Preparedness Centre (BDPC) .The village level organizations revolve the fund among them to earn improvement in their empowerment and livelihood. The present study tries to examine the impacts of SIPP on the empowerment and livelihood improvement of hardcore poor families in village level. Associated objectives included to know the women empowerment and livelihood changes in other social areas compared with the past .A total of 100 respondents are selected as sample using stratified random sampling technique on five villages under different Upazilla in Jamalpur District and data was collected through face to face interview by using household survey questionnaire and checklists. To know the objectives, explanatory research design has been followed. For the sociological study on the research topic, quantitative and qualitative method has been followed. For quantitative and qualitative purposes, survey and case study method has been followed respectively. The ‘Empowerment’ is measured by six dimensions such as ( I) decision making in family matter and its assessment ,(II) participation in economic activities and its assessment ,(III) participation in social activities and its assessment ,(IV) participation in political activities and its assessment ,( V) controlling ability in using contraceptive method and family planning and ,(VI) heath caring and using of hygienic sanitation and water system. The ‘Livelihood’ is measured by two dimensions such as (I) receiving different trainings regarding how to utilize the micro finance support for livelihood improvement and (II) ensuring employment status by using the financial support from SIPP .OLS (Ordinary Least Squares) regression is applied to know the impacts of the program on each dimension of empowerment and livelihood of hard core poor woman, and aggregate empowerment and livelihood. The results show that SIPP is positively associated with each dimension of empowerment and livelihood as well as aggregate measure of Empowerment and Livelihood. So, this study reveals that the program improves the empowerment and livelihood of hard core poor women in Bangladesh. Further 5 rating Likert Scaling is used which reveals that improvement of empowerment and livelihood is high due to project financial and training supports. As the majority 53 % believed that improvement of empowerment and livelihood is high/very high, simultaneously 28% medium and 19% low/very low due to support of SIPP at project areas in Bangladesh. This study may help to GO and NGOs to take further more appropriate policies/initiatives to improve the empowerment and livelihood of poor and hard core poor women/families in the country