SWAPNO Stories
How the SWAPNO Project turned a Challenge into an Opportunity
The SWAPNO project stands committed not only to providing an episode of employment for extreme poor women during project duration, but also to promoting employability beyond the project, and to ease the transition from safety net employment to market driven employment. While most of the poor in Bangladesh are destined...
Taming Destitution by Mastering Dressmaking
“I want my daughters to take up government jobs.” Afsana Khatun, SWAPNO participant, Kurigram It takes three hours by an engine boat, crossing the mighty Brahmaputra River, to reach Afsana’s small hut in a remote village of Rowmari Upazila in Kurigram district. A legacy of poverty traversed through generations in...
SWAPNO: Experience with Ready-made Garment Sector
The Government safety net programme, SWAPNO, entered a partnership with EcoFab, a sister concern of the Viyellatex Group, to provide jobs for destitute women. SWAPNO is a cash-for-work project that aims to lift rural women out of extreme poverty by providing them with employment and access to skills and assets. ...
SWAPNO: Public Works Employment for the Benefit of Local Communities
Background Public Works (PWs) programmes are implemented by the government or aid-agencies to create short term employment for increased income and food consumption, poverty and poverty gap reduction, and infrastructure development. PWs are a prominent part of the social safety net portfolio in developing countries, especially in Africa and South...
Swapna Rani: A Story of Perseverance
Swapna Rani, born in a poverty-stricken family, was married off at the age of twelve, unprepared for marriage and the difficult adjustment dealing with in-laws whom she didn’t know. Her husband was a day labourer. Since Swapna was only a child, she found it very hard to please her husband...
Poverty Orphan to Spice Vendor
It was lean period, starvation was rampant. All edible leaf, vegetables and roots in the village exhausted. Bakron’s family went without food for the consecutive third day. The emaciated children of the family, two boys and two girls turned pale and frail. Among the famished children two girls seemed to be...
Rising from the Ashes
Jamila’s life was literally shattered by the strokes of poverty, river erosion and disease. After marriage she started her new life at the bank of the river Bramhaputra (son of the creator). She gave birth to a daughter but happiness did not last long. Her house was devoured by the...
New Opportunities Float Down the River
Anowara lives on a pristine island in rural Bangladesh, 360km from the capital Dhaka, surrounded by the Dudhkumar (the Milk River). Anowara traversed stormy waters for the first chapter of her life. Landless and impoverished, her family used to live on somebody else’s land. Poverty took its toll - her...