People’s Organisation

JCF believes in holistic community development and the journey began in 1981, when it started working in the Sweeper Colony of Jessore town with the own fund. The community was treated as untouchable and was totally deprived of their rights as a human being. They used to live in unhealthy situation, children didn’t go to school and women were living on the mercy of their male family members. JCF started to motivate the male members first and was able to form some groups with the target of collecting small savings and started to educate them. Observing the positive change in their children and the development initiatives of JCF worker is not only working on any agenda but the result made them to attend night school for elderly people and their wives attended in the evening school. Their children started to go to school, their children studied up to Higher secondary school, there was no early marriage in their community, nobody was beating their wives, children’s are immunized, pregnant women are going to health centers regularly, 100% people of their community are using sanitary latrines and drinking safe water, many of them have their own houses, they have television, they have established their own community center. Now a days, they are working in government and non-government offices, doing small businesses like saloon, leather and leather goods, meat shop, grocery shop and some are engaged as rickshaw pulling, motor vehicle driver etc like other people of the society.

In 1996 JCF managed foreign fund to operate large scale community development intervention, Urban Community Development Program (UCDP) in the slums of Jessore town and a total of 54 Community Based Organisations (CBOs) were formed. After completion of the Donor fund the CBOs formed a federation named JOYOTI Society in 2002 and got registration from Govt. The members were poor, mid level & lower mid level women and children from urban slums of jessore. At present it is coordinating all development activities of the 54 CBOs in Jessore town, arrange meeting, accounts monitoring and annual audit, staff capacity development through training, monitoring and supervision, assist in reporting and preparing annual work plan and budget, manage legal support and assistance, establish networking with different govt. and NGOs. There are more than 20,000 women members in Joyoti Society and continuing various activities of their own.

More than 7,000 ultra poor village women formed 33 CBos in chuadanga district. The members didn’t have any regular income and was living in extreme poverty, many were involved with illegal trade work across Indian border. JCF has been assisting them since august 2002 to perform these activities and is trying to develop their capacity to run their own organization when they will be capable we will withdraw direct support. In 12^th November 2015 it got the registration from government of Bangladesh as a new organization name AAMRA JOIE society. The goal of this organization is to improve livelihood of the existing members as well as other extreme poor women. The organization has an executive committee according to the number of groups. Each community based people’s organization is represented by 1 member in the people’s organizations area federation. The main activities of the organizations are savings and credit operation, health and social awareness training, gender and legal rights training and legal assistance, skill development training, networking with local service providers etc.

The extreme poor women of two development project of JCF in Natore district formed their 42 self-help groups (in 2009, 275 poor women families and in 2013, 1000 poor women families). They formed the groups with a view to economical and social self sustainability of themselves. After lot of struggle and providing some skill development and income generation trainings from the project their self confident grown up and from then they started to save regularly and deposited that money to their respective groups’ accounts. They have taken registration from cooperative department in December 2015 under AAMRA SHADHIN women cooperative group ltd. The main activities are: passing gifts to poor families and included more families in the community, savings and credit activities among the SHG’S members and income generation, provide trainings, musti rice (handful of rice) collection for fund raising, hourly works as cleaning the household or environment or earning fund, livestock rearing, vaccination camps, beef fattening, sharing and caring with each other for creation the social values, linkage with local government organization for various support receiving, empower women organization & vegetable gardening for better income and nutrition.

In the above three cases (JOYOTI Society, AAMRA JOIE & AAMRA SHADHIN) JCF has been successful to manage getting registration as independent organization of the once nurtured groups and organizations under donor funded project. And there are another 20 organizations waiting to get registration in Rangpur district to operate at the same way while have that registration.