Urban Agriculture

The urban poor in Bangladesh spend approximately 65-70% of their income on food.  Urban agriculture can improve living conditions of the urban poor through improving food security, generating income, and reducing HH expenditure on food.  Urban agriculture techniques include:

•          Homestead vegetable production

•          Poultry rearing

•          Milking cow rearing

•          Beef fattening (especially 6 months before Eid)

•          Goat rearing

•          Mushroom production, preservation & marketing

•          Bee keeping & honey production

•          Vaccinator development

•          Fish culture

•          Plant nursery & sapling selling

•          Agro-processing, value addition, marketing

•          Compost preparation from kitchen waste

•         Others

The Urban Agriculture sub-component (UA) aims to achieve the following:

   

·         Create opportunities for urban & peri-urban food production

·         Enhance HH food security and the nutrition status of urban poor HHs

·         Reduce HH food expenditure of the urban poor

·         Generate employment for the urban poor

·         Promote linkages to the local economy and service providers

Sensitisation Workshop on UA at Town Level

After the formation of CDCs a one-day sensitization workshop is organised at the Town level for:

·         CDC Office Bearers

·         Agribusiness stakeholders in the town

o        Representatives from Department of Agriculture Extension, Department of Livestock Services, Department of Fisheries

o        Local/national NGOs working in agricultural sector

o        Agribusiness representatives

·         Local government representatives.

The estimated number of participants depends on the number of functional CDCs, but no more than 100 participants should attend.  The main purpose of the workshop is to sensitise participants on why urban agriculture is necessary, how to optimize utilization of available agro-based household/community resources and share success stories of other towns.  The workshop also introduces the scope of linkages between local service providers and the community.

The CDC Office Bearers share the knowledge and information gained from the workshop with their CDC members and begin brain storming UA ideas.  The cost of the workshop is as per the approved UPPR rate.

 Use of Vacant Private/Khas Land

After identifying vacant private land in the Community Baseline Survey on Agro-based Resources, the community, with assistance from the TT, negotiates with the vacant land owners to use the land for food production.  The start-up costs will vary, depending on the type of food being produced and the amount of land available, and can range from BDT 5,000 to 40,000.  The community, with the assistance of the TT, estimates and justifies these costs in the SEF contract preparation stage, and also estimates the amount of food and other benefits that will be produced.  If a derelict pond is identified for rehabilitation, the intervention can be initiated through the SIF contract. In this case, the vacant land/pond owner /department will sign an MoA with the CDC extreme poor group (EP) to provide user right for mutually agreed  duration. The terms and conditions of MoA (e.g. lease value/share crop, duration, investment cost share or not, land development  cost share or not etc) have to be agreed by both parties and detail defined locally. The MoA should be signed preferably on non-judicial stamp of Tk. 150 (if not possible offset paper may be used). The witness of the MoA should be local elite/ responsible official of the government department. The signed MoA needs to be attached with community contract under SEF as Annexure. The contract may be made under SIF if major renovation of pond/land is necessary. In case of SIF contract, the MoA must be singed having user right of community people at least for 5 years.  

WBA or PIP

Well-being Analysis  or Participatory Identification of the Poor  

Purpose of the Well Being Analysis:

Well-being analysis is fundamental to understand the community, its level of poverty, how different people experience poverty and marginalization, as well as relations between rich and poor and how these are structured.  Well-being analysis is an important participatory method that captures people’s perceptions of poverty and identifies different classes and interest groups with whom problems and desired activities can be explored.  However, the analysis outlined here, will allow the projects to use the exercise to identify its ‘target’ population from the bottom two categories of households.

The Process of the Well Being Analysis:  

The exercise requires that the facilitators visit the community more than once  

On the first visit

a)      They transect the settlement/community to explore the number of neighborhoods.& meet with people to get a sense of the number of households,

b)      Identify a suitable place in which all residents are comfortable (a neutral place, e.g. not in front of an elites’ house), including the poorest and most vulnerable, for example single, widowed, divorced, abandoned women;

c)      Find out which day and at which time most people are free and available,

d)     And inform as many households as possible when and where the meeting will be held.

On the second visit (the day of the exercise)

Step 1 – Introduction and Objective

Step 2 – Capturing Each Household and the “Invisible Poor”

Step 3 – Classification of households.

Function of Community Development Committee (CDC)

After formation of Primary Groups, the CDC will be formed in each community. All Primary Group leaders and secretaries will be members of the CDC. The members will elect a Chairperson, a Vice-chairperson, a Secretary and a Treasurer as office bearers for a period of two years. Only a man may fill up the vice-chairperson. Each CDC will open bank account for monetary transaction. CDC is responsible to execute the all activities in the community. CDC is accredited by respective City Corporation to give them legal status at local level. CDC maintains 4 bank accounts and the accounts are operated under joint signature of the cashier (mandatory) & Chairperson or secretary. CDC meeting held fortnightly. 

A CDC Cluster is formed covering 6-10 CDCs.  A committee is formed at the cluster level, to take responsibility for cluster level activities and to have direct access to the project town team through the CO.  Each CDC nominates two representatives to join the CDC Cluster Committee.  The CDC Office Bearers will elect the Cluster Office Bearers from among all the Cluster Committee members.  The CDC Cluster Committee and its Office Bearers is accredited by the City Corporation. The Cluster provides support for training, information sharing and community-to-community monitoring of Community Contracts i.e. both Settlement Improvement Fund and Socio-Economic Fund activities.  It is also responsible for the annual audit of the savings and credit operations of the CDCs.  Training program will be organized by project staff to develop the CDC Clusters' capacity in terms of technical, financial, management skills.

To enhance the capacity of the PG, SCG, CDC & Cluster members, UPPR Khulna Town have initiated different types of initiatives. Skill development training and exchange visit are major of them. During UPPR period organized different types need based skill development training like savings & credit, leadership development, skill development on SIF & SEF fund management, skill development training on IGA, vegetables cultivation, poultry rearing etc.

Reverse Osmosis System

Drinking Water Supply through desalination of Surface Water (Bhairab River) with Reverse Osmosis System.

Two-third of the world is water. But 97% water is saline. People are to depend on only 1% of the total water  for drinking, cooking and other uses. Bangladesh is also surrounded with water. Upto now people  are using ground water. Water table are being lowering day by day. Arsenic is the great problem also. So, people should use surface water to mitigate the crisis.

Khulna City Corporation is the third largest urban city of the country with 1.5 million people. The city corporation falls under the zero impact zone of Sundarban. Being a coastal city Khulna City Corporation is struggling to ensure drinkable water supply to its citizen mainly due to unavailability of drinkable ground water source. The city can not use treated surface water due to high salinity in coastal surface water.

The new project propose a technological solution of purifying surface saline water by using the Reverse Osmosis technology and introducing a community led water distribution system through the CDCs created under UPPR (Urban Partnerships for Poverty Reduction) program under the leadership of Khulna City Corporation.

Now a days water and sanitation is accepted as basic livelihood option. By providing pure drinking water from surface saline water at a nominal cost of Tk. 0.20 per liter, the project will ensure more time availability for men and women to earn for the family. At the same time reduced water borne diseases will reduce expenditure on health and more illness free working days for the earning member of the family that ensures more income for the family. Hence the present intervention will contribute very positively towards poverty alleviation.

Bhairab River is a big surface water source, for City Corporation. It cannot be used due to high salinity. One reverse osmosis system has been installed as pilot basis. Peoples are getting saline free water from here. If this project becomes success, other big projects will be established. Then the pressure on ground water will be reduced.

The Reverse Osmosis machine will produce 8000 liters of water in eight working hours per day. Half of the water i.e. 4000 liters will be bottled in 20 liters bottles and be sold at Tk. 20/- per bottle in well-to-do families and commercial enterprises like restaurants, fast food shops and offices. Each day the filled in bottles will be replaced. The bottles will be cleaned, refilled and sealed in a built in semi-automatic plant with the Reverse Osmosis machine.

The rest 4000 liters will be supplied to poor CDC members. For the poor CDC members the cost of each liter of water will be Tk. 0.10/- only. Arrangement will be made to supply 4 liters of drinking water to each member of each family. The families will pay for their consumed water at the end of the month. Exceptionally poor person and very senior members of the community will get water free of cost. The Project Implementation Committee will decide who will get free water.