Promoting Resilience of Vulnerable through Access to Infrastructure, Improved Skills and Information

In Bangladesh, despite recent economic growth, high levels of poverty persist in rural areas. The country's farmers make up 47 per cent of the workforce and face a range of major challenges including annual floods, climate change, sand casting, river erosion, poor levels of rural infrastructure, low agricultural intensity and productivity, inadequate non-farm investments, limited livelihood options and restricted access to social services. PROVATI³ aims to address these issues by:

• improving and upgrading rural infrastructure, especially roads, markets and shelters
• enhancing poor people's ability to generate income and gain durable employment
• increasing precision and access to flood information at the community level

Improving the resilience of the population in a flood-prone and extremely poor area is the central theme. The increased resilience will result from better physical infrastructure, more diverse income streams for rural households and better decision-making based on sound flood information. The project also plans collaborate with other agencies, NGOs, microfinance institutions and the private sector.

PROVATI³ will be implemented in six districts and will cover 303,000 households (approximately 45 per cent of the total population), though the proposed infrastructure improvements and flood information system are expected to benefit the general population of the project areas.