Family Health International

Many of the current initiatives of JOBS Trust focus on creating links between the private sector and some of the most marginalized populations in Bangladesh. For instance, working with Family Health International we are lowering the risk of HIV/AIDS among high risk populations, including rehabilitated injecting drug users and sex workers, through economic rehabilitation:

- By the end of 2008 more than 150 high risk individuals will be placed in wage-based employment opportunities.

- To date more than 80% of the individuals placed remain in the program, compared to the typical 90% recidivism rate seen in these populations in Bangladesh.

UNICEF

Another prominent project with the United Nations Children’s Fund focused on increasing the livelihood options for rural adolescent female youths in the hopes of delaying early marriage. To date JOBS has:

- Identified wage-based employment opportunities for 660 female adolescents near their homes in rural areas.

- Only 1 of the 660 adolescents has gotten married, a rate of 0.0015%, in a country where 72.1% of rural women marry before the age of 18.

Save the Children

In 2007 JOBS began working with Save the Children on numerous initiatives including:

- Procuring relief supplies following Cyclone Sidr in late 2007, procuring more than $1.3 million dollars worth of supplies to create relief kits for 15,000 households.

- 2 livelihoods assessments for Save the Children US in Bangladesh;

- A Value Chain / Cluster Scan for Save the Children US in Uganda in early 2008;

Concern

JOBS is working with Concern to identify livelihood opportunities for char (island) dwellers in northern Bangladesh.  As part of this project JOBS:

- Is implementing a livestock (cows and sheep) fattening initiative which will target more than 100 households, linking char dwellers with a private sector, export oriented  meat processing company

- Is working with 166 households cultivating value-added crops in 298 demonstration plots on 4 different chars, linking them with private sector input providers and forward  linking the products to a large grocery chain

- Is setting up village-based agro-processing with the assistance of a Thai food processing expert, linking the char dwellers to higher value markets regionally and nationally.

JBIC

JOBS carried out an assessment in collaboration with JBIC to identify the access to finance of the "Missing Middle" - Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) too small to qualify for formal banking services, but too large for microcredit.