Prokritee

Prokritee’s mission statement is to develop the social and economic capacity of rural, disadvantaged women in Bangladesh.

Prokritee (meaning “nature” in Bangla) is a service-based agency that provides managerial, product design and development and marketing assistance to organizations in Bangladesh.   Prokritee manages eight Handicraft Enterprises and helps other groups to sell their products in local and foreign markets upholding Fair Trade standards.

Prokritee and its eight  enterprises provide jobs for poor rural women. The women who work for the enterprises are widows, divorcees or head-of-households, with little or no income. By providing jobs for women, Prokritee is able to improve the women’s standard of living and help them send their children to school. Now they are able to look at the future with hope and happiness, instead of poverty and despair.

Prokritee is created by Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in 2001 to independently manage the eight job-creation enterprises with its own management and organized structure. The enterprises are located in different parts of the country and were set up by MCC during the period 1977-1999. Each enterprise is individually supervised by a Project Manager with the help of a Producer Management Committee (PMC).

Prokritee, having its central office in Dhaka, markets the products made by the enterprises (and other like-minded groups not associated with MCC) through its marketing arms, which are termed as Export Marketing and Local Marketing.