Overview:
GKS approaches food security not as emergency relief, but as a long-term economic and agricultural empowerment process for smallholders, char dwellers, marginal tenant farmers, and indigenous communities. By combining micro-capital financing, climate-resilient crop technologies, market linkage development, and household food banking, GKS protects vulnerable families from seasonal hunger (monga) and market price volatility.
Core Objectives:
- Secure year-round, nutritious household food supplies for extreme-poor families and char communities.
- Boost smallholder farmer incomes through adaptive, high-yield agricultural practices and enterprise value chains.
- Enable rural women to own productive agricultural assets, generate self-employment, and participate in household financial planning.
- Establish community-owned safety nets that safeguard food access during emergencies and seasonal disasters.
Key Interventions & Field Activities:
- Microfinance for Income-Generating Activities (IGAs): Disbursing targeted microcredit and micro-enterprise loans to enable marginalized families, primarily female borrowers, to invest in poultry farms, dairy cattle, goat/sheep rearing, pond fisheries, homestead vegetable trade, and cottage industries.
- Climate-Resilient Crops & Farmer Demonstration: Partnering with the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) and input firms to establish demonstration plots for drought- and flood-tolerant cash crops like hybrid maize, sweet gourd, groundnuts, and pulses in sandy char soils.
- Community Food Banking: Organizing ward-level Food Bank Committees where neighboring households deposit small quantities of rice into airtight storage drums during harvests, creating an emergency grain reserve to prevent starvation during floods.
- Homestead Nutrition Gardening: Training mothers to cultivate year-round micronutrient-dense vegetables, practice organic seed preservation, and manage backyard poultry to combat maternal and child malnutrition.