Assessment of Rural Women’s Access to Nutritional Programmes in Jamalpur District of Rural Bangladesh: A Comparative Study between World Vision Beneficiaries and Non-Beneficiaries

The main purpose of the study was to make a comparison between world vision beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries regarding access to nutritional programmes and others. A total of 100 rural women consisting of both beneficiaries (50) and non-beneficiaries women (50) were selected from Lakkhirchar and Meshta unions of Jamalpur sub-district following simple random sampling technique. Data were collected using an interview schedule and analyzed with a combination of descriptive statistics and inferential statistical technique. The findings indicated that beneficiaries of World Vision Beneficiaries (WVB) had high level access to nutritional programmes compared to non-beneficiaries. While no significant difference regarding nutritional status between the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of WVB considering the BMI indicator. Correlation analyses indicated that organizational participation of the beneficiaries and communication exposure and training on nutritional issues of non-beneficiaries showed significant positive relationship with their access to nutritional programmes. But other variables did not show any significant relationship for both cases. The non-beneficiaries women faced more problems compared to beneficiaries’ women. Most of the non-beneficiaries women (62%) faced high level of problems while 90% of the beneficiaries’ women faced low level of problems in receiving nutritional services. Unwillingness of the participants in nutritional programmes and lack of awareness on nutritional services identified as most severe problem for beneficiaries of WVB and non-beneficiaries in receiving nutritional services respectively. Despite having problems the rural women were very much enthusiastic and eager that could help policy makers to take necessary steps to increase the access in different nutritional programmes.