MFI Report

Foundation History:

The birth of the Organization may be traced back in the activities of a local club at Bharatkhali of Gaibandha district, one of the remotest and disaster prone northwestern District of Bangladesh. Geographically, one of the distinctive features of the district is that out of its total 2179 square km the river the Teesta, the Brahmaputra and the Jamuna engulf large north to south in the eastern part. The district has about 2.2 million populations. It is heartening to mention that Gaibandha is one of the extremist disaster prone areas of Bangladesh. Flood is often common during the monsoon. Reversibly there is prevalence of drought almost every dry season of the year. Most miseries in the life of the people is river erosion and this rendered a large number of people homeless, land-less, assets-less and also in loss of valuable belongings. River erosion is one of the serious causes of poverty in this disaster prone district. The number of poverty stricken people is increasing day by day where the country situation is reverse.

There is widespread unemployment scenario in the absence of mills and factories at Gaibandha. Only option for a large number of people is selling the manual labour mainly in agricultural sector. And when either crop sowing/plantation of harvesting is over the labour class has almost nothing to do as their income, other time of the year brings untold sufferings in their life either starvation or eats far below the calorie and nutritional requirement. Having no other alternative a large number of labour class migrate to other potential areas in urban and wealthy areas. The Socio-Economic story of Gaibandha district does not end here. Temporary migration for a large number of people creates so many new problems in their families. The women and the children of the migrated wage-earning members become more helpless as a result of the migration of their guardians. Women’s dependence of men in many aspects of living and livelihood brings scope of male domination on women and this subdues the women’s voice. Striking social problems in and around Gaibandha are dowry, polygamy, separation with husband, abandoned wife, early marriage during childhood, divorce, physical and mental torture on the wives render the life of women and children miserable.

A group of youth had been involved in various Socio-cultural and peoples’ welfare program around 1987 and gradually their effort turned into developmental program. SKS came to development field with small financing for the poor and small entrepreneurs to save them from the clutches of small entrepreneurs.

Initial support was given both in kind and cash. Organized target people were encouraged to savings from beginning. Within a short time SKS received attention of Oxfam-GB a western donor agency. A good number of training, technical support and assistance from them enabled SKS to go ahead professionally. This is how the SKS progress was made. In 1991 SKS received registration from the Dept. of social welfare. This local level registration and govt. recognition strengthened the morale of SKS. Hide