Bangladesh Roadside Tree Plantation

Dear Friends,

On March 11, 2017, Poverty Eradication Program (PEP) published its first ever crowdfunding project on GlobalGiving. Rie Makita of Japan had made this suggestion to us and we are very grateful to her and to her friends who contributed, together with many friends in the USA.

In our project proposal, we proposed to plant 45 kilometers of roadsides in rural Bangladesh, needing $66,015 over three years. PEP (formerly named IIRD) has previously planted over 550 kilometers of roadsides with timber tree saplings and a couple hundred kilometers of mulberry saplings for a silk industry in order to provide employment and regular income to poor rural women.

For each kilometer of roadside timber tree plantations, PEP signs a legal agreement with the local government unit which owns the road and with 15 poorest families who live along the road. PEP receives government permission to use the road for 20 years to nurture and develop the timber saplings. When trees are pruned or eventually harvested, the income is divided in three ways; 60% income is distributed among the 15 poorest families in each kilometer and 20% each goes to support the local government unit and PEP. Since 1989, the poor have received over $1 million, with more than 8,000 families sharing this amount.

Although $9,918 has been raised for this project till now, which is 15% of the total needed over three years, we are planning to plant 12 kilometers in Bogra, which is 26.67%. Of this amount, 9 kilometers will be on both sides of a recently constructed government canal and the other three kilometers will be on three separate roads in Sherpur upazila of Bogra district. We will purchase large tree saplings from government and private nurseries and plant them along these 12 kilometers of canal and roadsides at the end of June, after completing the legal agreements with the government and the 180 poor families who will own 60% of the tree wealth.

We will hire 12 women from the poorest families, who will be paid a monthly salary to help support them and their families; they will have this employment for three years. In most cases, the women can save some fund each month so that they can purchase economic assets over the three years to allow their families to move out of the poorest level of poverty. They might begin a small grocery shop, purchase livestock or poultry, a bicycle rickshaw or van for their husbands or sons and so forth.

We are very grateful to our almost 70 donors who have made this important environmental and poverty eradication project possible. We will continue to send reports every three months or so to keep you informed of the progress on these 12 kilometers of plantations and any additional plantations we can establish through donations. We hope to include some pictures in the next report and include background of at least one of the women tree caretakers.

Warmest regards,

S. M. Mujibur Rahman and the PEP Team