Locations
Strengthening Women’s Ability for Productive New Opportunities
Background
Bangladesh has been registering impressive economic growth and progress in human development over the past decade. Despite achievements, vulnerable employment, as well as increased frequency and intensity of disaster and climate risks are stalling further development. The COVID-19 pandemic has posed an additional socio-economic challenge to Bangladesh, exacerbating inequalities and pushing millions of people into poverty. Women are bearing the brunt of these complex challenges, and the pandemic has halted or even reversed much of the progress achieved in gender equality.
Strengthening Women’s Ability for Productive New Opportunities (SWAPNO) is a gender-based poverty graduation project that targets vulnerable rural women who are widowed, divorced, abandoned, or left with a disabled husband unable to earn an income. SWAPNO focuses on lifting poor women out of poverty and helping them sustain a higher income level after the end of project support. Through targeted skills training, the women can invest their savings for productive purposes, yielding a stream of income for years to come. In addition to self-employment, SWAPNO helps place women in local Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and private sector companies in the formal and informal sectors.
Area of Work
- Poverty reduction
- Gender equality & women empowerment
- Beneficiaries’ skill development
- Climate change adaptation & disaster risk reduction
- Small-scale enterprise development, and
- Formal sector employment of rural women.
Significant Achievements (1st Phase):
- SWAPNO's intervention significantly improved livelihoods of 12,492 households in poverty and disaster-prone districts of Bangladesh.
- Digital financial system ensured 100% of its women beneficiaries had access to financial institutions.
- 588 women successfully placed in job opportunities within the Ready-made Garments and Leather sectors.
- Women-led cooperatives continue to operate effectively even after completion of the project cycle.
- Household income of women beneficiaries almost six times higher than that of the baseline and beneficiary households’ expenditure and savings increased almost three times higher than the baseline.
- Beneficiary households got greater access to major categories of social services than the control households. The beneficiary household’s attainment of digital services (e-payment through bKash/Rocket/Nagad etc.) is nearly about double compared to the control households (95% vs. 54%). A similar trend was found in the other services - Agriculture (42% vs. 2%), Livestock (40% vs. 4%), and health services (62% vs. 44%).
Significant Achievements (IP Phase):
- Feasibility assessment of the project completed and aims to reach out to 10,188 extremely impoverished women in 12 poverty and climate-vulnerable districts.
- The project has developed the ProDoc and Detailed Project Proposal (DPP), which have been submitted to the Economic Relations Division (ERD) under the Ministry of Finance, Government of Bangladesh. The DPP is expected to be presented and approved in the upcoming Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) meeting.
- To streamline the beneficiary selection process and ensure it is entirely digital, the project has established a digital application (Android app).
- The project has developed a comprehensive Plastic Waste Management training module, which will promote effective recycling practices.
- Various training modules have been prepared, and the project is ready to commence field implementation immediately after the DPP approval.
OBJECTIVE
Economic growth is achieved in a more inclusive manner, with economic opportunities reaching rural poor women and vulnerable groups are protected against shocks.
