By Sue Corcoran
All the headlines agree. This has been an especially difficult year for Bangladesh.
A river ambulance, supported with funds from Niagara Volunteers for Bangladesh, responds to emergencies in remote areas of the country.
A series of deadly factory accidents culminated in the worst industrial disaster on record in May, when a garment factory in Savar collapsed killing more than 1,100 people. Also, this past spring, Cyclone Mahasen struck the southern coast of Bangladesh with heavy rain and fierce winds that forced the evacuation of more than a million people. But the people of Bangladesh know adversity only too well and are resilient.
Niagara Volunteers for Bangladesh (NVfB) is an all-volunteer group founded in 2004 to work in partnership with established, local, grassroots NGOs, in Bangladesh, to lessen the hardships of extreme poverty. These partnerships have been very powerful in ensuring our efforts to reach the most impoverished and destitute.
NVfB partners with the Local Environment Development and Agricultural Research Society (LEDARS) <www.ledars.org> which was established in 1996 in the south western coastal region to promote social, economic and environmental development. LEDARS works with landless and marginalized men and women. Projects NVfB has participated in include:
a) Safe drinking water is a scarce commodity in Bangladesh. The availability of potable water is expected to worsen due to the effects of climate change and extreme weather with rising sea levels, storm surges, flooding, and cyclones increasing water salinity in coastal areas. Also problematic is the high amounts of arsenic and growing salinity in groundwater. NVfB has helped by funding Pond-Sand Filters, Bio-Sand Filters, and community bases rainwater harvesting (Reservoir) initiatives. With NVfB’s support, LEDARS installed 98 Bio-Sand Filters and established two Rain Water Harvesting Systems. The Bio-Sand Filter technology LEDARS is piloting supplies potable water to at least 108 families.
b) NVfB contributed towards the acquisition of a river ambulance which will ensure that injured persons living in this remote, inaccessible island area receive timely access to medical care. The River Ambulance is providing support to the tiger and crocodile victims as well as the adjacent community.
c) NVfB helped finance the purchase of land for the future Climate Change Adaptation Center, in Shyamnagar, in an effort to avert catastrophe. A Jadavpur University and World Wide Fund For Nature study estimates that more intense cyclones, higher tides, and some of the fastest recorded sea-level rises in the world increasingly threatening to submerge many of the coastal islands in the Bay of Bengal. This will displace a million people by 2050 forcing people living in the delta to become homeless, climate change refugees.
d) NVfB has helped finance income generating activities and training, and small business/ entrepreneurial projects for the livelihood of the ‘tiger’ widows and their children. The ‘tiger’ widows are organized into six self-help groups for a total of 120 widows with their leaders forming an association named Akota to coordinate development planning. LEDARS provides micro credit/loans for small business startup. Thirty-eight widows are currently engaged in small business projects such as tailoring.
Other NVfB partners in Bangladesh are:
a) Scholars Special School was founded in 1995, in Dhaka, to provide an academic and life skills program for children with disabilities/special needs and low income students. It currently serves 110 students. The school Includes a lunch program which is an extremely important component given that ‘poor nutrition stunts the growth of almost half of all children in Bangladesh under age five’. Scholars recently added speech therapy to the curriculum and some of the non-verbal children have begun to vocalize for the first time.
b) Unite Theatre for Social Action (UTSA) <www.utsa.up.to> was established in 1997 in Chittagong to offer several different programs such as therapeutic theatre to deal with social justice issues. It has expanded its mandate to offered other programs including pre- and primary school for the slum children to “stem the curse of illiteracy.” Recently 70 students graduated to either a regular school grade 5 program or vocational training.
c) The Children Leukemia Assistance and Support Services (CLASS) formed in 1998 to fund treatment for children with cancer and support for their families. CLASS currently cares for 11 children with leukemia in the special Children’s Cancer Ward housed in the Chittagong Medical College Hospital. NVfB donors contributed to the purchase of an ambulance and assist with the purchase of medication.
Since 2004, NVfB has supported more than 400 students at the Scholars’ Special School in Dhaka, the UTSA primary school in the slums of Chittagong, as well as schooling for children of the ‘Tiger’ widows in the coastal region and sponsored 5 school children from the ‘untouchable’ community in Mollapara Village in the North..NVfB has also built or repaired almost 70 homes destroyed by severe monsoons and cyclones and provided safe drinking water for several thousand people. NVfB built a hygienic community latrine system, a tube well and a room, which serves as a student study room by day and a community meeting room by evening, for the ‘untouchables’.
But none of these partnerships could exist without the most important one of all. The partnership with the community of Niagara and Southern Ontario is the key that makes our work possible.
Please join us to celebrate a decade of making a difference. NVfB will host the tenth annual fundraising dinner on Saturday, October 19 at Westminster United Church, 180 Queenston St., St. Catharines. Tickets are $15.00 ($5 for children under five years). For information visit http://www.niagarabangladesh.com. For tickets/information phone Mahbuba 905 680 4669, Nasim 905 682 6569, Louise 905 938 2345, or Marie 905 704 0189.
For additional information contact Sue Corcoran, 905 684 7519 or sm.corcoran@hotmail.com .
Sue Corcoran is a resident of Niagara, Ontario and a member of the Niagara Volunteers for Bangladesh.
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