A learning exchange meeting of successful women and men entrepreneurs at the upazila level was held on Wednesday in Jamalpur with a description of their experience gained through production process, marketing and liaison with various stakeholders.
Jamalpur Sadar Upazila Nirbahi Officer Litus Lawrence Chiran was present as the chief guest at the meeting. District Senior Agriculture Marketing Officer Mohammad Enamul Haque, Sadar Upazila Social Service Officer Shahadat Hossain, Executive Director of Unnayan Sangha, among others, spoke at the meeting.
Rafiqul Alam Mollah, Director of Human Resource Development Jahangir Selim and others. The meeting was moderated by Sadeka Begum, Gender Affairs Officer, NSVC Project. The meeting was attended by 25 successful entrepreneurs from different working areas of Sadar Upazila. They describe their activities as well as the challenges in the production process and want to know how to overcome the obstacles in the future.
Participants, including Agriculture Marketing Officers, Social Service Officers and World Vision staff, reviewed the discussions and worked out a way out. Particularly involved in the project of World Vision Bangladesh Nutrition Sensitive Value Chain (based in Jampur) with the financial support of the Australian NGO Corporation of the Government of Australia. Islampur and Dewanganj Upazila). The project is working with 20,000 small farmers and their families of which about 13,500 are women and 8,500 are men. The main objective of the project is to improve the economic development and nutritional status of the beneficiary families of the project.
The NSVC project is assisting small farmers in liaising with government service providers. Introducing modern agricultural technology and encouraging the use of modern technology.
It has also helped in establishing effective relations with the producers / suppliers of private agricultural inputs to get quality agricultural inputs at affordable prices. As a result, the agricultural production of the farmers has increased a lot, the income of the family has increased and the nutritional status of the family is being improved. At the same time, the project aims to make the beneficiaries aware of the relationship between nutrition and gender equality. As a result, women's empowerment is happening.
The project has created a number of women agri-entrepreneurs who are running their businesses efficiently. On the other hand, a day-long workshop was organized in Jamalpur on the initiative of Unnayan Sangha's Save for Seeds project to create awareness about mobile banking, account opening procedures, savings deposit techniques and biofortified rice seed procurement process.
It is chaired by the executive director of the development association. Rafiqul Alam Mollah. Shafiqul Islam Khan, Consultant of Harvest Plus, Taufiqul Islam, Senior Marketing Manager of UCBL-Way, Jahangir Selim, Director of Human Resource Development Department of Unnayan Sangha, Krishibid Kharbid were present at the workshop. The program was conducted by Murshed Iqbal, Assistant Director Program of Unnayan Sangha. The workshop was attended by 18 field level workers from 32 farmers and development associations of Jamalpur and Sherpur districts. The process of supplying genuine and good quality seeds in zinc paddy production to meet the nutritional needs is discussed in detail. Farmers will open savings accounts in their own way through Unnayan Sangha and deposit their savings there. It is learned that the company will give a discount of Tk 100 if it buys 5 kg of zinc paddy seeds with the saved money.