The Bangladesh Rural Development Board (BRDB) is continuously working for socio-economic development of the poor in rural Bangladesh. The debt collection rate of this government institution in Jessore is 99%.
Md Kamruzzaman, deputy director of BRDB in Jessore, said that BRDB's aim is to create 'self-reliant prosperous villages through organizing training, capital formation, modern technology, existing opportunities and integrated management of resources.
At present, the BRDB is working in various fields, including financial inclusion of members, human resource development, capacity building of rural poor, poverty alleviation, elimination of discrimination between men and women and empowerment of women, extension activities.
The activities that the BRDB is conducting at the field level include informal human organization creation and formal human organization activation, stimulating rural people, income generation and skill development and capacity building training, beneficiary capital creation and its management, agricultural credit, microcredit distribution and its management,
At present, the BRDB is working towards the goal of integrated rural development by organizing the small and resource-deprived poor people under cooperative societies and informal groups in line with the rural development policies and strategies of the government.
Jessore has 9 programs under implementation and 4 projects under ADP.
Currently 9 programs of BRDB and 4 projects under the Annual Development Project (ADP) are under implementation in Jessore district.
Through all these projects, 3381 cooperatives have been formed in the district so far.
A total of 108,904 members have been enrolled in these cooperatives with a capital formation of Tk17.39 crores.
Tk 857.79 crores were disbursed in the form of agricultural loan and micro credit distribution with a loan collection rate of 99%.
Training was arranged for 316 Freedom Fighters and a total of 285 deep tubewells and 2167 shallow tubewells were distributed through cooperatives among farmers.
The Integrated Rural Development Program (IRDP) was adopted in independent Bangladesh in 1972 under the direction of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to implement the 'Comilla Model' introduced in the 1970s and widely praised.
IRDP played an important role in achieving food self-sufficiency in the country by providing agricultural machinery and technology transfer to farmers through 'two-tier' cooperative system, training, credit assistance, expansion of marketing facilities, increase in food production.
The BRDB was established as a government institution through an ordinance in 1982 after evaluating the success, contribution and importance of IRDDP in rural development. The BRDB Act was passed at the Parliament in 2018 during the tenure of the current government.
