Time : July 2015-June 2021
Taking into account the efficiency and agility of SDF, the World Bank MTR Mission recommended that considering the disbursement status and successful program implementation and above all the impact the program has been able to create against the project development objective, the “Nuton Jibon” Project can be completed one year ahead of scheduled closure meaning in June 2015 instead of June 2016.
In this regard there had been evaluations by the World Bank that led to several meetings and communications between the Bank and Financial Institutions Division, Economic Relations Division, Social Development Foundation and World Bank to launch poverty eradication follow up operation titled “Nuton Jibon Livelihood Improvement Project (SIPP-III)” in July 2015 with a six year time span. The project would consist of (a) community and livelihood development (b) Business partnership and market linkages (c) capacity building, monitoring, learning and project management. Some other sub-components are also included in the SIPP-III such as disaster risk management, climate change adaptation and nutrition.
It has also been decided that the upcoming project will intervene in around 2500 new villages in 6 new districts along with expanding programs in the uncovered areas of some existing districts that fall under the poorest areas of Bangladesh according to the Household Income Expenditure Survey-2010 conducted by Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) with a budget to the tune of US$ 200 million. The HIES-2010 survey has identified a total of 100 poorest upazilas under 25 districts of Bangladesh. Through SIPP-III SDF will be serving a total of 36 upazilas amongst them. It may be mentioned here that the Ministry of Finance, Govt. of Bangladesh has committed to provide a total of US$ 20 million as counterpart fund bringing the budget to the tune of US$ 220 million. The six year project SIPP-III is planned to start its journey in July 2015 and scheduled to be completed in June 2021.
Coverage
The project would work in a total 21 districts – amongst them 9 will be supported with second generation activities of SIPP-II, 7 will be SIPP-II districts with extended coverage and 5 will be new districts. They are – Jamalpur, Mymensingh, Shariartpur, /sherpur, Comilla, Chandpur, Barisal, Barguna, Patuakhali, Pirojpur, Gaibandha, Rangpur, Kurigram, Nilphamari, Dinajpur, Bagerhat, Khulna, Satkhira, Sirajgonj,Naogaon, Sylhet.
Project Components
The Notun Jibon Livelihood Improvement Project (NJLIP) would consist of three components.
(a) Community Institutions ad Livelihood Development : The objective of this component is to mobilize the poor and extreme poor in selected rural communities by building and strengthening beneficiary community institutions and at the same time provide funding for small infrastructure and livelihood support for project beneficiaries. This component has one additional objective that is providing nutrition awareness and agricultural production knowledge.
(b) Business Development and Institutional Strengthening : This component would aim to increase livelihood opportunities of poor and extreme poor by facilitating their organization into producer groups, cooperatives and societies and by improving their market and business organization and forward and backward linkages in the market systems. Specific objectives would be to (i) build and strengthen producer organizations as market partners and commercially oriented entities (ii) facilitate interaction between producers and traders/processors of products (iii) support market/ business oriented investment to solve bottlenecks in the market chain.
(c ) Project Management, Monitoring and Learning : This component would support the management of the project, monitoring and continuos learning throughout the project period. The component would continue supporting third party monitoring and impact evaluation activities as well as build and expand on communication/ presentation that SIPP-II has initiated.
Objectives
Empowering rural poor, emphasizing women;
Creation of strong and sustainable village institution having an active role in shaping the future of the communities;
Improving the living conditions of the hardcore poor and poor by increasing income through livelihoods;
Developing skill and generating employment opportunities for the unemployed youth in the poor and hardcore poor households;
Channel grants directly to the community;
Create second generation institutions with those villages that will graduate to next level;
Providing onetime grant to the most vulnerable for reducing poverty;
Building linkage with higher level financial institutions;
Provide support to the village organizations;
and
Mal-nutrition mitigation program.
Expected Outcomes:
40% beneficiary households would be able to increase income by at least 30%.
1 million impoverished people would be directly benefitted from the project and amongst them 90% must be female.
By 2021 there should be 80% beneficiaries with livelihood investment with a financial rate of return of at least 10%.
25,000 Youth would be employed through project facilitation and sustain for at least one year.