Gender and Development

Bangladesh

Rural Poor Cooperative Project, 1992

The Project, launched in 1992, has been successfully promoting the establishment of rural poor cooperatives to meet local savings and credit needs of the poor, especially women. The project focuses on the development of cooperatives, strengthening support services for the cooperatives, and training for women in microenterprise development.

Cooperatives of the landless poor have been supported by a new district Bitaheen Central Cooperative Association. Of the 8,507 primary cooperatives formed, women constitute 78 percent of the 248,633 members and the majority of borrowers. Their involvement has exceeded all expectations. The project target was to establish 1,200 new male and 2,370 female cooperatives for landless people. By September 1996, the number of female cooperatives exceeded 3,244. Female loan repayment rates have exceeded 95 percent, and more than 75 percent of the subprojects are owned and operated by women.

The overall objective of the project is to support the government's poverty reduction efforts through the creation of sustainable nonfarm employment to increase incomes of the rural poor. Provision of credit is supplemented with training for activities such as trading, agroprocessing, paddy husking, and cottage industries. Where the women have been able to gain some access to land, they have also taken loans for farming activities, including beef fattening, vegetable growing, fish culturing, and betel leaf cultivation. Under a program to promote ideal homesteads, the members have planted more than 600,000 fruit and timber trees and established 32,000 vegetable gardens. The resulting incremental income has enabled women to provide their children with better food and regular schooling. Overall, the project has had a significant development impact on women and has helped to improve the living standards of more than one million poor people.