General Information

Bangladesh has made important strides in reducing poverty over the past three decades but more than 40 percent of people remain in poverty. The pace of poverty reduction must accelerate if Bangladesh is to reduce the number of people living below the poverty line from 58.8% (1990) to 29.4%, as agreed under the MDGs. Main purpose of DAM is to change the livelihood pattern of the people in general and the poor people in particular.

In order to improve the livelihood pattern of the vulnerable people of the country, it is essential to arrange multi dimensional support for the poor people. Skill development and micro finance support play key roles for achieving 1st and 3rd goal of MDGs which are, a) Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger. b) Promote Gender Equity and Empower Women. Through services like- savings and credit, people started gaining access to the capital needed to start or expand a business. Financial management and business training are helping entrepreneurs improve their skills and find markets for their goods & services. These new skills contribute economic growth and stability to a community.

To address the issue of livelihood development, DAM has been involved in the upliftment of human resource in terms of skill development, promote diversification of agriculture and create easy access to micro finance for livelihood development. Besides agriculture diversification, and skill/vocational training for increasing the productivity of human resources some more complementary activities are organized to improve the livelihood pattern of the disadvantage section of the people of the community. One of these is to train people to work in both technical and non-technical jobs to increase their income and improve their living standard.

In DAM a number of specific interventions are there for livelihood development which includes micro-credit, vocational skill development, integrated food security, agricultural diversification, disaster preparedness and rehabilitation, etc.