Abdur Rahim, 34, is now operating multifarious businesses with running capital of around Taka 78 lakh together with attaining profit of Taka 38 lakh annually inspiring many others to follow the lucrative income-generating ventures.
A resident of Jhaluka village under Durgapur Upazila in Rajshahi district, he began fish farming first on six bigha of ponds in 2014 amid a flying start just in the initial year boosting his interest to the field to a greater extent.
He had to invest Taka 72,000, including loans of Taka 50,000 from the Department of Youth Development (DYD), for taking lease of the pond and meeting other necessary requirements. Prior to this, he was imparted a month-long practical training on the related field by the local DYD.
In phases, he continues to enhance the number of ponds and at present, he is farming fishes on around 70 bigha of ponds. Side by side with the fish farming, he started rearing poultry birds in limited scale with 1,000 layer birds in 2016. He is rearing around 7,000 layer poultry birds in five sheds and ninety percent of those are egg-laying at present.
"I couldn't continue my institutional study after passing SSC in 2006 due to poverty," said Rahim, adding the worst situation has become removed at present through his painstaking efforts.
He's also engaged in vegetable and date farming besides the fish, poultry and beef fattening. Around 40 people are working on either a regular or irregular basis in his ventures.
Around 20 other youths have become self-reliant after following him and taking his suggestions in the area.
Abdur Rahim was given the National Youth Award 2021 as recognition for his laudable contribution to the fields of employment generation and self-employment.
Apart from Rahim, many other promising youths have become socially dignified through transforming them into entrepreneurs after getting training and credit support from DYD.
"We have provided time-fitting skill development training to 1,789 youths, both male and female, for making them self-reliant during the last eight months of the current 2022-2023 fiscal year," said ATM Golam Mahbub, Deputy Director of DYD.
Institutional and non-institutional training were arranged for them on nine income-generating trades and vocations. Youngsters were trained in fisheries, poultry, dairy, cattle-fattening and animal husbandry, while young women learned tailoring, sewing, block, boutique and computer.
Mahbub said more than 703 youths were self-employed in various fields, including family-based programmes. A total of 515 trained youths were given loans worth around Taka 2.33 crore under the credit support programme.
Twelve youth organizations were given registration and Taka 10.10 lakh were donated to 25 enlisted beneficiaries from the youth welfare fund.
The youth organisations were encouraged to plant trees and take care of them properly in supplementing the national efforts for environment protection, he continued.
So far, 1,754 trees were planted at the upazila and village level, he said.
Golam Mahbub said they are imparting computer and networking training to the youths of the backward rural areas and the char (riverbed) in particular through mobile training vans under a three-year project.
"We are bringing 40 youths, specially the physically challenged ones, under the two-month training from each of the seven upazilas in the district," he added.
Main thrust of the project titled "Technology Empowerment Centre on Wheels for Underprivileged Rural Young People of Bangladesh" is to make the targeted youths skilled through ICT training to their doorsteps.