A team from the Philippines visited Narayanganj City Corporation on 13 September to learn and share the two countries’ experience of reducing urban poverty using digital platforms.

The delegation consisted of UNDP Philippines’ Resident Representative, Titon Mitra, Senior Policy Advisor, Andrew Parker, Technical Assistant of Philippines’ Ministry of Interior and Local Government Fausiah Abdula and Mohammad Nor Abdullah Anggie.

Narayanganj Mayor, Dr Salina Hayat Ivy, lauded UNDP’s urban poverty reduction initiative - “Livelihoods Improvement of Urban Poor Communities Project (LIUPC)” – during the visit.

“The project is helping the poor people particularly women to get out of poverty and it is also helping me connect closely to the people of my city corporation,” she said and hoped the project will be scaled up to cover the whole country.

Ashekur Rahman, Head of Poverty and Urbanization of UNDP Bangladesh presented the keynote paper on LIUPC as a part of the knowledge sharing exercise while Titon Mitra, UNDP Philippines’ Resident Representative, shared his country’s experience of using digital tools to address urban poverty.

Ashraful Amin from UNDP’s Access to Information (a2i) programme, which focuses on simplifying citizen services using technology, gave a presentation on the project’s innovations to this end.

Following the knowledge sharing session, the delegation visited LIUPC’s operational areas in Narayanganj to learn first-hand about the experience of the community people.