Overview:

Millions of people are living below the poverty level in Bangladesh

Hundreds of issues are there, why they are forced to live without food, proper clothing and shelters

Most of those issues might not be solvable overnight.

It should be the responsibility of solvent people to take steps to help them in affording food, clothing and shelter

Keeping that in mind Poverty Alleviation Drive has been launched in early 2016 to take steps to alleviate poverty from our beloved motherland

What is Poverty Alleviation Drive (PAD)?

Poverty Alleviation Drive is a program designed to help people in Bangladesh who live below the poverty level with no source of income

PAD program helps people in Bangladesh with physical / mental disabilities, old age, lack of enough physical strength for work and so on

PAD program finds the eligible people and provides them with some sort of ‘Income Source’, such as financing for a little store, buying a battery driven rickshaw, buying a cow as a source of milk and so on.

How PAD Works?

Interested brothers or sisters first enroll themselves with the program

Enrolment is nothing formal but being added to the Face book Group

It is recommended but not mandatory to make a monthly donation to the program to generate funds to finance for the projects

Typically each member from Canada donates $10 CAD, US & UK members donate $10 USD,  and Bangladeshi members donate Taka 100 BDT per month

Any monthly amount is acceptable, however the above mentioned amounts are considered as minimum monthly donations

How PAD Works (cont.)?

All the money is sent to Bangladesh every month to Finance Manager of this program

A very strict, transparent and clear spreadsheet is maintained to ensure the visibility of donation and expense history

Two separate spreadsheets are maintained

One is for tracking donations and expenses directly related to recipient

The other spreadsheet maintains the account of all overhead expenses such as expenses for finding a potential recipient, making arrangement for the income Source for the recipient etc

Normally the spreadsheet is updated every month

This program works project by project

Each project starts with finding an eligible person / family and ended up with handing over the ‘Income Source’ to the recipient

PAD volunteers take interview of the primarily selected eligible recipient, document the interview with video recording and post it to the face book page to share the information with all members.

All Members are open to review the recipient’s video and status posted in the face book page  and to make comments on that for supporting or not supporting the person for selecting as a recipient of the grant

Based on comments of the members a final decision is made to select the primarily selected recipient for the grant

All members are open to propose and make arrangement for primary selection of a recipient and go through the final selection process mentioned above

All the members are notified about all the activities and have access to the spreadsheets for any type of account inquiry

Who is eligible as a recipient?

A person with following criteria is eligible for the grant:

With physical disabilities

Who has no property, no source of income, depends on other people for his / her food, clothing or shelter

Who is willing to have a little source of income so that  he / she can maintain his basic family needs such as food, clothing and shelter

Strategy and Goal of PAD Program:

Most of the wealthy people in our society are willing to help poor people. In  most cases, wealthy people donate some money to poor people and poor people just spend that money for fulfilling their instant  need

Those donations do not help them solving their poverty problem in the long run

All the personal small donations are distributed in a scattered way, which make poor people happy for time being with no solution of their ongoing poverty issues

Strategy and Goal of PAD Program (cont.):

Poverty Alleviation Drive (PAD) program collects the small donations from the members (wealthier people) on monthly basis, put them together to make it a reasonable amount (typically BDT 30,000 to 35,000)

PAD hands over the donations to eligible recipient in a form of ‘Income Source’ such as buying a milk giving cow or battery driven rickshaw or by helping the recipient opening a small store and so on

No cash is handed over to recipient. PAD volunteers make all arrangements for the Income Source of the recipient

The grant helps recipient to have a permanent Income Source which helps his / her family live a better life

Conclusion:

Poverty is a real issue in our society

Small contribution from wealthy members of this program will help poor brothers and sisters in our society getting rid of miserable life with hunger

If at least one eligible person can get a permanent Income Source and get out of poverty every month, then each year we can help 12 families to have a better life

More members means more donations that will help more people get out of severe poverty

Small individual donations can make a huge difference and can alleviate poverty permanently from our society and bring smiles to our brothers, sisters and future generation