Poverty Eradication Program (PEP) serves the poorest of the poor, those who are often excluded from mainstream development programs.
Our model for integrated rural development—which includes environmental, economic, and social programs delivered through a participatory process—was designed to meet the needs of the extreme rural poor in Bangladesh and the neighboring Indian provinces of West Bengal, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh.
Nearly 600 million people live in this small area. The poverty is extreme; in fact, the region might have no equal in the world in its need for urgent developmental intervention.
Right now, 72,758 families (363,790 persons) live in 1,694 villages within PEP’s working areas which is 16.3% of the total population. Of these 7.0% are extreme hard core poor, 38.2% hard core poor and 54.8% very poor families (39.9 % very weak and 14.9 % are weak); A total of 5,063 families (25,315 persons) are extreme hard core poor, surviving on one meal a day; another 27,827 (139,135 persons) are hard core poor, getting at best two inadequate meals daily. (Click here to see the details of latest survey information).
We empower these poor families with resources and many forms of support.
Each family is an active partner in its own planning and activities to get out of extreme poverty. PEP’s unique and innovative social worker system, which brings highly motivated and trained local youth in direct contact with each family, is central to our bottom-up, decentralized, and participatory methodology.