International Desk

DHAKA- The European Union (EU) and the Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation (PKSF) today signed a grant Agreement worth around 23 million EUR to implement a new project styled "Pathways to Prosperity for Extremely Poor People (PPEPP)-European Union".

PKSF Managing Director Dr Nomita Halder and Head of Cooperation, EU Delegation to Bangladesh, Maurizio Cian inked the agreement worth EUR 22.81 million on behalf of their organizations at the PKSF Bhaban at Agargaon in the capital.

The PPEPP-EU project will support 215,000 most vulnerable extremely poor households (about 0.86 million people) in 145 unions of 12 districts where poverty rates are higher than the national average, said a press release.

The specific objective of the project is to enable the target people to exit from extreme poverty and make significant progress along a pathway towards prosperity.

The project will work in flood-prone river basin area of northwestern region (Rangpur, Kurigram, Dinajpur, Thakurgaon, Nilphamari and Gaibandha), cyclone and saline-prone southwestern region (Khulna, Satkhira, Bagerhat, Patuakhali and Bhola), and northeast haor region (Kishoreganj) and some ethnic minority clusters in the north.

The project will work around livelihoods and enterprise development, nutrition and primary healthcare, access to services through community mobilisation, disability inclusion, climate resilience building and women empowerment.

Target groups will include women-headed households, single mothers, the elderly, households with child labour, persons with disabilities, people of third gender and intersectional groups such as ethnic minority.

PPEPP-EU's legacy project - Pathways to Prosperity for Extremely Poor People (PPEPP) - was originally launched by PKSF in 2019, with joint funding from the UK government's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO; formerly DFID) and the EU.

Following FCDO's exit from the project after four years of successful interventions, the EU signed separate grant contracts with the Economic Relations Division, Ministry of Finance, GoB, and PKSF to continue the project for the next three years.