May 28, 2018
A road to financial stability in Bangladesh

Photo: Star

SDG Fund’s Program is Empowering Vulnerable Women in Bangladesh

Growing up in Bangladesh, Shapana Rani was told women should not leave their home for work, but these days, she is usually on the road from morning to night.

The single mother of two drives a rickshaw to make a living and support her family. She got the battery-operated vehicle from her district, which paid for about 60 percent of its cost. She was able to pay for the rest with money she earned as part of an SDG Fund project in her community, as well as the help of a loan.

Called Strengthening Women’s Ability for Productive New Opportunities, or SWAPNO, the project is one of 23 run by the SDG Fund around the world. In Bangladesh, the program focuses on employing vulnerable women in poor communities.

Rani got married at age 12 and her husband left her after she had their second child. She heard about the SDG Fund program in August 2015 and was accepted after applying. Through the program, she got a job conducting maintenance work on rural roads. It helped her save money so that she could later buy the rickshaw when the opportunity came up.

“I have been driving the auto-rickshaw for almost a year now and my fate has changed,” she told the Daily Star newspaper.

For Rani and other participants, the program provides more than jobs – it gives them and their families food security, confidence and a chance to escape the brutal cycle of poverty. Bangladesh is a South Asian country with more than 163 million people, about 40 million of whom were living in poverty in 2016.

SWAPNO is a $4.6 million project done in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme and the International Labour Organization, as well as local and national Bangladeshi partners. The program employs women in public works projects, which not only provides participants with much-needed paid work, but improves public assets such as local roads.

Program participants such as Rani receive skills training, are encouraged to save a portion of their wages, and are given a graduation bonus at the end of the program. The program had the bold goal of helping 65,000 very poor households in rural areas, providing them with food security and better livelihoods. For Rani, it helped her put her and her family on a road to a better life.