Economic Development Sector

Bangladesh has been badly affected by war and natural disasters including 1971 Liberation War, mega cyclonic storms like Sidr and Ayela, and now—one of the world's largest refugee crises after receiving an inflow of 750,000 Rohingyas who fled persecution in neighboring Myanmar. As a result, a significant segment of the population has been struggling to lift them out of poverty. Like many other developing countries Bangladesh has succeeded in ensuring sustainable growth in the last decades and reduced poverty level significantly. But we are still long way from reducing the socio-economic disparity that’s making the rich richer and the poor poorer. With its limited resources, government cannot do it alone. So a number of Non-governmental organizations have addressed the issue of poverty alleviation and come forward to help the rural and urban poor come out of the vicious cycle of poverty. Nonetheless, Bangladesh is facing massive challenge to meet up the demand of her ever-increasing population. Although agriculture sector is the main source of income for this rural-agro based country, unfortunately this sector has largely failed to create rewarding employment opportunity for the landless. Considering these overall situations, the NGOs are working on poverty eradication by directly involving the poverty-stricken population. Their target groups are basically the poor and vulnerable ones living in low resource settings.

CSS since its inception has been focusing on creating alternative livelihood opportunities especially for rural women. As a humanitarian development organization, CSS believes that women, who constitute almost half of the population, need to be empowered socially and economically to make contribution in overall development process, hence reducing gender disparity and discrimination. Even in early days, when Bangladesh was literally an aid dependent country, the founder chairman of CSS took up skill development training programs to create competent human resources and entrepreneurship opportunities. The projects and programs of Economic Development Sector are designed to create employment opportunities among poor and achieve sustainability of development projects beyond external financial support.