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The major purpose of this study is to determine the extent of poverty and ascertain the causes and possible ways for poverty alleviation as perceived by the rural people. Poverty alleviation was measured by computing the change in food availability, sources of drinking water, physical assets, sanitation and increasing scope of income due to involvement in the Chars Livelihoods Programme (CLP). Field work for the study was carried out in Haldia union of Shaghata upazila under Gaibandha district of Bangladesh. Data was collected from January to February 2007 from a randomly selected sample of 102 CLP beneficiaries from a total of 148 through personal contact by using interview schedules, made by the researcher himself, which contained simple and direct questions with different scales. The paired "t" test was used to measure the comparative change of ´before´ and ´after´ involvement in CLP. Pearson product moment correlation co-efficient was computed in order to explore the relationship between the selected characteristics of the respondents and their poverty alleviation.

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Md. Nazirul Islam Sarker is currently working as a Deputy Manager of a private commercial Bank in Bangladesh. Previously, he was a program officer at the Chars Livelihoods Program funded by DFID, UK. In 2005 and 2007 he completed his B.Sc.Ag (hons) and MS in Agricultural Extension Education from Bangladesh Agricultural University achieving First class and CGPA 3.906 out of 4.0 respectively. Subsequently, he completed his Commonwealth Executive MBA which was offered jointly by Commonwealth of Learning and Bangladesh Open University. The author completed the Diplomaed Associate of Institute of Bankers´ Bangladesh (DAIBB) from Institute of Bankers Bangladesh and Diploma in Islamic Banking from Islami Banking Training and Research Academy (IBTRA), Bangladesh. He has published nine scientific articles in various reputed national and international journals.

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