(August 25, 2011) Caritas Bangladesh and a UK-supported local NGO on Monday signed
an agreement to alleviate poverty and create sustainable livelihoods by 2015 for about
10,000 people living in the south eastern Chittagong Hill Tracts. Benedict Alo D’Rozario,
executive director of Caritas Bangladesh, and Colin Risner, chief executive of the
United Kingdom-sponsored Shiree signed the agreement at the NGO’s office in Dhaka.
Caritas will receive 290 million taka (US$3.9 million) in funding from the NGO out
of a total budget of 320 million taka for the project. “We’ve chosen extremely poor
people as our target group, especially the landless, unemployed and widows. We’ll
support them to rely on productive and income-generating livelihood schemes such as
cultivating crops, planting fruit saplings and rearing livestock,” said James Gomes,
Caritas Chittagong’s regional director.