The Chars Livelihoods Programme (CLP) works with extreme poor households living on island chars in North West Bangladesh. It aims to improve the livelihoods, incomes and food security of at least one million poor and vulnerable women, children and men living on the chars.

This paper evaluates the impact CLP has on the disaster resilience of communities through CLP's livelihoods work. It analyses the impact CLP has had on building disaster resilience of char communities, evaluates work of other agencies that address disaster resilience, identifies gaps which are currently present in increasing the resilience of the communities, and suggests strategies to address them.

The results of the study showed that the CLP programme dramatically improves the overall disaster resilience of communities in disaster preparedness and response; knowledge and education; governance; and risk assessment, moreover it reveals that women's disaster resilience is greater than men after the CLP support package, at the same time new national policies will take time to be implemented.