Grihayan Project (GP)

The poor have little financial ability to afford building houses, which is a basic need. They live in makeshift kinds of thatched shelter that barely protect them from rain in the summer, cold in the winter or give them minimum sanitation. Children grow up in sub-human and unhealthy conditions. To have a house is a dream for most of the poor. MFP helps the poor to augment their family income. But it hardly creates enough surpluses to be used for building houses. To cope with this problem, UDDIPAN with financial assistance from Bangladesh Bank, has been piloting a Grihayan (housing) project since January 1999 in three Upazilas of Chittagong with the objective to assist the needy and interested poor families to build houses.

The Project provides long-term soft loan to the poor families. The target was to provide a long-term soft loan of Tk. 20,000 to each of the 350 families to be repaid in 10 years. UDDIPAN has achieved 100 percent target through lending Tk. 70,00,000 during the 1st phase for constructing 350 houses with sanitation facilities and easy access to safe water. The loanees have refunded Tk. 64,49,800 as of June 2010. The piloting has been found to be successful by fulfilling the dreams of the poor to own houses. The GP will be expanded in the coming years.