PURBASHA

Looking into the ever-growing issue of school dropouts and migration of local villagers from Sunderbans, PURBASHA, (a livelihood support programme), was started as a pilot initiative in December 2019. It has been designed as an interest free revolving credit support for local villagers looking for alternate income sources apart from subsistence farming. 

The idea was to help the local villagers to improve well-being through additional and vital streams of income, reduce vulnerability and help them to adapt to more sustainable use of natural local resource base. 

The programme which started as an experiment, worked very well during the pandemic period, and has reached out to more than 12 beneficiaries till date in its pilot stage cutting across businesses like fish rearing, poultry, animal husbandry, computer literacy centers, organic gardening, sound system and trading.