Livelihood Improvement of the Participants of the Service Emergency for Rural People Program

The study aimed at exploring the livelihood improvement of the Service Emergency for Rural People (SERP) program (a program of HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation) participants and finding out the relationships between the selected characteristics of the SERP program participants and their extent of livelihood improvement. Data were collected from the SERP program participants of four unions under Atwari upazila of Panchagarh district by using a pre-tested interview schedule from 17 May to 25 June, 2014. There were 1,030 SERP program participants in the study area and they constituted the population of the study. A sample of 103 participants was selected by using stratified random sampling method. The selected nine characteristics of the participants were considered for exploring their relationship with livelihood improvement of the SERP program participants. Livelihood improvement of the participants was measured by a 5-point Likert scale. The observed scores of livelihood improvement of the participants ranged from 51 to 101 while the possible range was 45 to 225. The mean of livelihood improvement scores was 81.84 with a standard deviation of 9.44. All of the participants had low livelihood improvement and the variation among the mean scores of the livelihood capitals was low. The highest livelihood improvement was observed in case of natural capital and the lowest was social capital. Four out of nine selected characteristics of the participants, namely education, annual income, agricultural knowledge and extension media contact had significant positive relationships with their livelihood improvement; while age, family size, farm size, training experience and organizational participation did not show any significant relationships with their livelihood improvement.