Business Desk :
SWAPNO (Strengthening Women’s Ability for Productive New Opportunities), a productive employment and climate adaptive livelihoods-based poverty graduation project and joint initiative of the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development & Co-operatives (MoLGRD&C), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Marico Bangladesh Limited, has recently reported significant progress in empowering Bangladesh’s ultra-poor rural women- specifically those who are divorced, abandoned, separated, widowed or left with a disabled husband.
Marico, a major stakeholder in the SWAPNO project, has significantly contributed to empowering the project’s beneficiaries by ensuring sustainable livelihoods for them.
Highlighted as one of Bangladesh’s flagship social safety net projects (as certified by the Cabinet Division), SWAPNO has worked in five poverty-stricken and climate-vulnerable districts: Satkhira, Kurigram, Lalmonirhat, Jamalpur, and Gaibandha.
The project has yielded impressive results since its inception, benefiting 588 women-headed households with formal employment (in RMG and leather sectors) and another 393 through local enterprise development projects, namely Bindu, Shunipun, Kallyani, Deshi, Areca, Dhorola etc., fostering significant sustainable economic growth in the targeted regions.
The initiatives undertaken by SWAPNO beneficiaries have resulted in a significant financial contribution to their household average annual income.
Internal analysis of the project has revealed that the approximate financial contribution to the economy from this project is over BDT 100 crore, highlighting SWAPNO’s substantial potential for income generation and economic resilience.
