A toilet in Chunarughat in the Habiganj district in Bangladesh has helped reduce fecal contamination for Amena Begum and her family. Credit: World Bank/M. Monir Amena Begum resides in a village in the Habiganj district in Bangladesh and is a mother to three young children. Last year Amena spent US$100 to construct a toilet to ensure her three children were ...
Photo Credit: Rumi Consultancy/World Bank The audience cheers as Wahidullah Zazai, 26, ascends the stage during the award ceremony for DEWAE, a program to promote innovation across the country under the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Sector Development Project. His winning innovation is the development of a registration system for hajis, or people who have traveled to Mecca as ...
Bangladesh has now joined the ranks of a lower middle-income country. But the next phase of growth and poverty reduction is harder. Credit: World Bank There is no doubt that Bangladesh is a modern day success story—a far cry from Henry Kissinger’s label of a “basket case.” Its growth has been steady, even impressive in the context of feeble ...
Earthquake survivors set up bank accounts to receive the first installment of 50,000 Rupees each. The rebuilding has long begun in Nuwakot District in the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal. Twenty months after the earthquake that took lives and devastated livelihoods, people are receiving their first payments under a housing reconstruction project and are rebuilding their homes to ...
Education indicators screenshot from the interactive poverty maps for Bangladesh Poverty maps are a useful tool to visualize and compare poverty rates across geographic areas, and learn about how poverty is distributed within a country, which is often times masked in national or aggregated statistics. For instance, the national poverty rate in Bangladesh in 2010 was 31.5 percent, which is ...
A 90 day reflection of the new Country Director of the World Bank I take this opportunity to thank all the Sri Lankans that opened their minds and hearts to help me understand the country context and constraints. During my first 90 days in Sri Lanka my colleagues and our clients gave me a warm welcome. I first met ...
Mr. Kannan, a differently abled social entrepreneur. (Photo: Varalakshmi Vemuru) During my recent mission visit to Sivagangai District in Tamil Nadu, India, I met with Mr. Kannan, a social entrepreneur. I was visiting communities to understand the latest efforts under the Tamil Nadu Empowerment and Poverty Reduction Project (TNEPRP) to support the differently abled with economic activities following their ...
“I started working from when I was 8. When father could not send me to school, I decided to do something to support my family financially. Today, I am working as a cook in this tea shop.” - Puran Saud, Achham (Photo Credit – Stories of Nepal) Goma is a girl, born in rural Kalikot. Her parents are illiterate, ...
Students studying at Dunya University, supported by the Public Financial Management Reform Program (PFMR). Rumi Consultancy/World Bank Armed with only a high school certificate, Daoud Shah Noor, 42, started working at the Ministry of Finance in 2012. The sole supporter of his family, he was unable to attend university because of prohibitively high tuition prices. Just four years on, ...
The capital city of Shimla is built on the mountain slopes of the state of Himachal Pradesh. On the streets of Shimla, residents stare at a strange group of visitors. The group looks and acts different from other tourists to this hilly capital of India’s mountain state of Himachal Pradesh. Not Indian, and definitely not the usual European retirees. ...
A man watches a piece of land fall into a river September 22, 2014 in the Kalashuna village in Gaibandha district of Bangladesh. Credit: Allison Joyce. 2014 Getty Images Geological hazards – or geohazards, natural or human-induced disruptions of the earth surface that may trigger landslides, sinkholes, or earthquakes, present serious threats to communities, cost extensive damage to infrastructure and can ...
“I didn’t go to school and I don’t have the money to run a bigger business. So I do what I know. Hardship is our way of life.” - Sangmu Bhote Gangdokpa, Sankhuwasabha (Photo Credit – Stories of Nepal) In 2003, Meiko Nishimizu, the World Bank Vice President for South Asia at the time, referred to Kathmandu as “an ...
Devotees at the Erwadi Dargah in Tamil Nadu, India. (Photo: DMPH Erwadi) Last month I blogged about how mental illness is curable, treatable, and preventable. Today, let me take you to a town in Tamil Nadu called Erwadi, where faith and medicine now go hand in hand to address mental illness. Erwadi is known for its 550-year-old Badusha Nayagam ...
“Today is the happiest day in my life. I never thought my son would be going to a boarding school in the city.” - Tsering Tejaba, Sankhuwasabha (Photo Credit – Stories of Nepal) The year 2015 was rough on Nepal. The catastrophic earthquakes that struck the country in April/May caused widespread destruction of life and property and was followed ...
Omer Ahsan is a chartered accountant in the making from Waziristan. He first heard about the Youth Employment Program, a free digital skills program offered by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Information Technology Board, from discussions on a group chat over Whatsapp, and applied immediately. Within two weeks of completing the digital skills program, Omer has built an online profile and ...
