Along with the development of the government a non-government development organization ‘FRIENDSHIP’ establishes a full standard of living with equal dignity by developing the standard of living of the disadvantaged people in the char area.

To this end, a welfare project entitled Assistance for Sustainable Development (ASD) under Climate Action Sector has been implementing for 721 char dwellers in Sadar, Chilmari and Rowmari upazilas under Kurigram District since 2017.

With the financial assistance of Friendship Luxembourg, Friendshipis implementing the project designed for five years for the underprivileged and disadvantaged char dwellers of the upazilas aimed at improving their living standard for making them self-dependent economically along with ensuring equal dignity through providing them with season-wise good seed of various vegetables and sheep.

Apart from it, to ensure good governance among the char dwellers and to eradicate social problems like child marriage, domestic violence side by side with building their capacity on facing natural disasters are also the objectives of the project, said Project Manager Md. Ashraful Islam Mollick.

The beneficiaries started changing their socio-economic condition by sheep rearing and vegetable farming.Bobita Begum 30s, a beneficiary woman of KurigramsadarUpazila, said like other beneficiaries, she received a sheep worth Tk 3,600 and seed of vegetable of twelve varieties from the project.

After rearing the sheep on the char land and farming vegetable on the homestead, the number of sheep has increased, and the vegetable farming is also extended at the homestead at larger scale. Now, she has four sheep the price of sheep has stood at Tk 16,000. She also earned Tk 8,000 through selling vegetables in local markets after meeting the family demand. The earned money helped her bear the family expenses without economic trouble during the hard and critical times.
With this income, Bobita also purchased a sewing machine worth Tk 10,000 and communicated with union parishad to repair road and repaired the road in her village for smooth movement on the rural road

Earlier, the beneficiaries were imparted need-based training successfully on sheep rearing and vegetable farming before engaging them in income-generating activities at the initiative of the project, Mollick further said.

As the lots of the beneficiaries had been changed significantly, they also expressed their gratefulness to the organization and its welfare project including the concerned officials and staff for standing beside them with sheep and vegetable seed.