Abstract
The purposes of the study were to determine nature of supports provided by different
organizations, to find out the extent of participation in Income Generating Activities (IGAs), to determine the level of livelihood improvement of extreme poor women through participation in IGAs, to assess the factors contributing extreme poor women
livelihood improvement, and constraints faced. Interview schedule, Focus Group Discussion (FGD), Case study, Observations, and Key Informant Interview were used
for data collection. Data were collected from 200 IGA participating extreme poor
women, who were the member of Bangladesh Rural Development Board, Palli Daridro
Bimochan Foundation, BRAC, and World Vision Bangladesh and neighbouring 200 non-participating women (control) selected by multistage random sampling procedure
during May 2014 to December 2014. The study was conducted in two unions of
Sreebardi upazila under Sherpur district. Different organizations provided various
kinds of livelihood support to their respective beneficiaries. Survey results found that majority of the IGA participants did not receive any kind of livelihood support other
than credit from the IGA supportive organizations. The extent of IGA participation of participant's women was higher than that of the non-participants women. Most of the
extreme poor women from the IGA participant group showed medium to high level
livelihood improvements while most of the non-participants women having medium
level livelihood improvement status in the past years. Out of sixteen selected
characteristics, the coefficients of correlation of eleven (11) variables were significant for IGA participants. These are family farm size, family annual income, social participation,
role in family decision making, livelihood aspiration, cosmopoliteness, extension media
contact, attitude towards NGOs, self-confidence, household food availability, and participation in IGAs. The other five (5) attributes included in the study did not have significant associations with the livelihood outcome, as shown by their separate
coefficient of correlation.It was observed that out of 16 independent variables, only six, namely family farm size, organizational participation, social participation, role in family decision making, cosmopoliteness, and participation in IGAs had significant
contribution to the livelihood improvement of respondents. The respondent's extreme
poor women faced a variety of multi-dimensional difficulties and constraints (economic,
social, legal, psychological, and cultural/religious) that affected the participation in
income generating activities as well as their livelihood. According to majority (65 percent) of the extreme poor rural women 'financial inability to arrange farmed and
non-farm inputs' is the top number problem towards the implementing IGAs. Other
important problem cited by them were- dependency on male family members, local
NGOs take high rate of interest, incapability of use the credit properly for not getting in time, inadequate training programme to run IGAs, lack of education and technical knowledge, unable to repay the loan in weekly instalment, social insecurity, restriction
on mobility, alternative entrepreneurial income generating activities are not available,
absence of monitoring programme. Extreme poor women were suggesting various solutions to minimize the constraints-providing sufficient government support, providing need based training, increase the rate of literacy, creating opportunity to alternative IGAs, diversified income earning sources, providing sufficient extension services, providing credit in time, and increase social security.