After the Rohingya refugee influx different factors led to unrest among refugee and host community. The project was designed to provide livelihood support to both the refugee and host community to create a balance in the socio-economic condition between the two communities. Since I was involved with implementation of numerous livelihoods projects of CNRS, I thought this would be great opportunity for me to stand by the affected people again but in a totally different context where each step welcomes new challenges and possibilities. One of the great aspects of this project in my eyes is that it works for women empowerment as 99% of the beneficiaries have been female. It’s my observation that women work the hardest but at the end they are denied of basic human rights. For an example, while talking about agriculture, we only talk about male farmers. But there is a big number of female farmers who work as hard as the male group. In this project we have tried to provide support to those women who have faced the rigid societal roles where they are asked to stay silent, who have faced the vicious cycle of poverty, who have been abandoned by their family but on the top of everything who have wanted to fight every disaster with the force of their own self-reliance. It has been five years since we are working with them and I have seen it all. I have seen how self-reliance can be the driving energy for people to achieve major changes. Now many of the women who have participated in the project activities have ensured a better financial condition. Some of them come to us and say “you have helped us to bring the changes.” Every time they say this every time I reply “it’s not us, but you who have achieved the changes.” Yes, it has been them from the beginning, we are just blessed enough to be a part of their journey towards prosperity and peace.

Prial Mutsuddy, Upazila Coordinator, CNRS