The CLP aims to improve the livelihood security of extreme poor island chars dwellers living in the five districts of the northern Jamuna River, north-west Bangladesh. Working within 150 riverine unions, these five CLP programme districts are Kurigram, Gaibandha, Bogra, Jamalpur and Sirajganj. Crucially CLP follows a systematic household by household approach to its work believing that “trickle down” development will come too little, too late for char dwellers.

The CLP is one programme in the UK Department for International Development’s (DFID’s) portfolio of activities, which aims to lift six million people out of extreme poverty in Bangladesh by 2013. The specific focus on extreme poverty is an acknowledgement that traditional development approaches have often failed to reach or help the poorest households and regions. All the activities in DFID’s portfolio recognise that unless specific efforts are made to reach the poorest people, they will remain well below any poverty line.

Reaching the Poorest: Geographical Targeting

The poorest and most vulnerable households in Bangladesh are concentrated in particularly marginal and extreme environments. The CLP working areas within the Jamuna chars are no exception, with an estimated 3.5 million people isolated from major markets, suffering from erosion and near-annual flooding, seasonal monga and extremely limited health and education service provision by government.

The CLP aims to improve the lives of at least one million of the poorest people living within its operating area, giving a particular emphasis to those households living on island chars.

Reaching the Poorest: Household Targeting

Within its operating area, the CLP is targeting 55,000 of the very poorest households on island chars, so called CLP ‘core beneficiary’ households. The main selection criteria for these households are that they:  

Ø  Have been resident on an island char for at least six months.

Ø  Are landless - owning no homestead land and having no access to agricultural or productive land, including that to be inherited under Bangladeshi government law.

Ø  Are assetless - do not own income-generating assets with a value exceeding Tk. 5,000.

The income of these households relies primarily on agricultural daily wage labour or migrant unskilled casual labour. Approximately 25% of these households are female headed. It is estimated by CLP that 225,000 core beneficiaries will be directly worked with by the end of the programme. It is also expected that a further 775,000 beneficiaries may benefit from the provision of household plinths, temporary employment activities, access to health and education services, social protection grants and other CLP activities.

Helping the Poorest: Different Interventions

The CLP strongly believes that not only do extreme poor households have to be specifically targeted but they also need intensive, context specific types of assistance. Given char dwellers particular circumstances, the cornerstone of the CLP approach is its pioneering asset transfer programme. Subsequently, the main livelihoods entry-point adopted by the CLP is the building of household finances by a one-off transfer of investment capital (presently set at about £170) to the poorest households. This financial injection is then followed by a sequenced programme of intensive household and community support.

Bangladesh is famous for using financial capital to build livelihoods in the context of credit programmes for the poor. The founder of Grameen Bank, Muhammad Yunus, won the Nobel Prize for his work on microfinance. The CLP believes though that for the poorest households, particularly those living in marginal and extreme environments, this more intensive type of assistance is required. This is why a major aspect of the programme is giving assets to the poorest 55,000 households living on island chars.