Livelihood Support and Women's Empowerment in Cox's Bazar

This project provides comprehensive livelihood support for communities particularly women girls and young adolescents living in the host communities affected by the influx of over 740 000 displaced Rohingya people in Cox’s Bazar since August 2017. Cox’s Bazar is one of Bangladesh’s poorest and most vulnerable districts with the poverty rate well above the national average. Even before the influx 33% of the host community population lived below the poverty line and 17% below the extreme poverty line. The arrival of the refugees has increased the supply of labour in the affected areas driving down wages and increasing competition in the labour market with a particular impact on the poorest host community households including those whose primary source of income is day labour. The influx has also put immense pressure on the availability and delivery of essential health services which were already scarce and overstretched. Women and girls and women-headed households are particularly vulnerable in this situation including to gender-based violence which is likely to increase in times of economic stress. The project is designed to meet the immediate needs of the affected host communities in selected sub-districts in Cox’s Bazar while building skills resilience and awareness to facilitate their long-term well-being. With a focus on empowering and girls the objective is to lift the most affected host communities out of poverty through a program that combines livelihoods social safety nets financial inclusion and social integration. Activities include: providing grants and related support to ultra-poor women for income generation activities such as home gardening and poultry-rearing; ; improving household food consumption; employment-linked apprenticeship training for out-of-school youth and adolescents (male and female); facilitating production and retailing of traditional clothing materials by women artisans; and targeted training of community health worke

The expected outcomes for this project include: (1) women particularly ultra-poor women actively begin engaging in multiple income-generating activities; and (2) increased income of adolescents and young adults (aged 14-25) and women artisans through self-employment.