Assistance for sustainable development (ASD) project run by FRIENDSHIP, a leading non-government organization of the country, has been working at the chars of Sadar, Chilmari and Roumaryupazilas of Kurigram district since 2007 creating positive impacts among the hard to reach char dwellers.

The project under Climate Action Sector is being implemented for 750 char families of the upazilas in cooperation with Friendship Luxembourg aimed to change the socio-economic condition including improving living standard one of the hard to reach char dwellers.

In a word, to make the char dwellers self-dependent economically through providing them with need base supports and assets transfer from the project is the main objective of the project,sources said.

Beside this, ensuringgood governance among the char dwellers and eradicating social problems and superistitutions like child Marriage, dowry, domestic violence side by side with building up their capacity and awareness creating on facing natural disasters are also the objectives of the project, said Project Manager Kbd. Md. Ashraful Islam Mollick.

As the land of chars and its environment are very suitable for vegetable farming and sheep rearing, the organization had distributed seed of 16 sorts of various vegetable and improved breed of sheep among the char dwellers under the ASD project to help them stand on their own feet through earning economic profit from the vegetable farming and sheep rearing within short possible time.

AnjumanAra Begum, a beneficiary woman of SadarUpazila, said like other beneficiaries, she received a sheep worth TK 3600 and seed of vegetable of sixteen varieties from the project. After rearing the sheep on the char land and the farming vegetable on the homestead, the number of sheep has increased, and the vegetable farming was also extended at the homestead at larger scale. Now, the price of sheep has stood at TK 28,000. She also earned Tk 24000 through selling vegetables in local markets after meeting the family demand. The earned money helps her bear the family expense without economic trouble during the hard and critical times.With this income, AnjumanAra also purchased a goat worth Tk 5000 and participated in repairing a road in her village for smoothly 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 said adding that

As the vegetable farming and sheep rearing had become successful and were playing significant role to change their lots, the other char dwellers are seen to engage in the farming and rearing after seeing the success of the selected people who took help and assistance from the project earlier.

The elite, public representatives of the chars highly lauded the assets transfer by the organization to the hard to reach and backward char dwellers of the upazilas to help them stand on their own feet economically.