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| Rural Development at the Naogaon
District |
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| Monoculture rice deteriorates
the soil. |
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As an alternative to an
unbalanced rice diet, the ASSB offers workshops on growing vegetables,
breeding animals and fish and on aforrestation.
Trainings on how to start small business regularly attract a
high number of participants.
It's a matter of discovering individual opportunities and abilities,
and of learning how to develop markets for several products,
and how to fund and bill projects. These offers enable group
members to become more independent from short term and seasonal
incomes as day laborers. |
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| Day Laborer
Harvesting Potatoes |
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| Gardening and Cultivation |
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| The ASSB's agricultural
advisers teach new and improved cultivation methods for vegetable
and corn. They share their knowledge in cases of slow or weak
growth. It is marvelous to see the newly developed vegetable
gardens. |
Women improve the diets
of their own families and share the new experiences. When they
sell their vegetables, they receive an extra income.
More and more melon, wheat and corn fields can be found between
the monocultures of paddy. |
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| Young woman threshing
grains. |
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| Breeding, raising & farming
of animals, fish and poultry |
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| Fish is a highly demanded
product in Bangladesh and offers a good income. With knowledge
transfer and financial support of ASSB, some members of the
group have started a fish farm after the ponds were properly
cleaned. Small stocking fish was set in and was fed with rice
husks. After 6 months the adult fish can be sold with good profits.
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| Poultry is also in great
demand. The ASSB provides the families with improved poultry
races for them to continue the breed. The profits from eggs,
meat and breeding animals enable people to pay back the initial
credits. Depending on the means, the money is invested into
goats, a cow or even a private piece of land. |
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| After school, the goats
are lead to grazing lands. |
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| Re-forrestation |
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| A growing problem in the
north of Bangladesh is the excessive wood cutting for fire wood,
for baking of bricks, and for obtaining new cultivation areas.
That's why the ASSB encourages and supports the planting of
new trees which will provide fruit fire wood or construction
timber. In addition to other activities, the ASSB donates two
small trees to any of their pupils on the day of the trees. |
| Each member of the women
activists receives 2 fruit and 2 timber trees in a year as a
donation. Thus, the ASSB hopes to inspire and develop an ecological
awareness in children and parents. |
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Health
Rural
development 
