An Initiative for Better Home4BetterLife

Bangladesh is a developing country and employment of the entire capable person is necessary for the development of the country. Women empowerment is also very important because no country will develop keeping half of its population in darkness. But women empowerment is obstructed by the social, economical and political conflicts. Basically rural women are worst sufferer. The women of Mathurapur village of Shyamnagar sub district of Satkhira district are the example of the worst sufferers. As the people of Mathurapur village live below the poverty line and subjected to several natural disaster like cyclones, soil salinity. Every year cyclones visit in this area for several time. It is very difficult for them to live in this high saline area. In this area, it is difficult to grow crops and most of them depend on Sundarbans resources for their livelihood. As a result, they are harvesting Sundarbans resources illegally. The women even collect viable mangrove seeds and used them for cooking fuel. By doing this, they are destroying thousands of mangrove seeds which creates great loss in the mangrove ecosystem. In this area, most of the women are engaged in fish fry collection from the river adjacent to the Sundarbans. They put their life in danger to live their livelihood and are trying heart and soul to come from the cycle of poverty.

Bangladesh Environment and Development Society (BEDS) has been working to motivate them on small scale farming and to improve the livelihood of the struggling women by homestead vegetable gardening, duck and ram raring etc. BEDS has identified that the women are interested in tailoring like small cottage industry and some of them are good in tailoring. But they are unable to conduct the activity commercially due to the lack of proper training and money. For this reason, BEDS has taken an initiative to empower 50 women of Mathurapur village by developing their skill on sewing and also providing them equipments related to sewing through raising fund from GlobalGiving platform. BEDS is communicating with the women and identifying the needs of the women by virtual communication due to the Covid 19 pandemic situation. The required budget for the project is 11,518 $ and so far 917 $ is raised from 21 donations. We hope to raise full fund of the project by 2020 and take proper initiative for women empowerment as described in the proposal.

So, it’s a heartiest appeal to all the donors for being kind to help those vulnerable women to give them a chance to come out from the cycle of poverty and lead a risk free life and also making a better future for their future generation.

Empowerment provides power to anyone in the world and women are most neglected people in many countries in the world. In Bangladesh, poor women are most neglected and it is very difficult for them to empower themselves due to some social, political and economic conflicts. Their life confined to the kitchen of the houses. The women of Mathurapur village live such a measureable life where they fight for their basic needs. This place is adjacent to Sundarbans and highly saline prone area. The people of this area are fighting against nature to live a normal life because there is scarcity of safe drinking water and they are always threatened by the natural disasters. In this situation, when all the people are suffering due to high salinity, it acts as a complete disaster to the rural women; because, they do not have such educational qualification and scope to work outside of their house. They simply stay in the darkness of house. They are deprived of political and social rights. But the struggling women have raised their voice so that they can earn their own livelihood and gain respect from the society. They think, if they have the power of money, they can contribute in their family to live a better life. They want to introduce a new beautiful life to the girls of this area so that they can become independent and lead a standard life.

Bangladesh Environment and Development Society (BEDS); a community based development organization has been trying to improve the life standard of those women by homestead vegetable gardening, duck and sheep raring etc. In 2015 BEDS has trained those women but couldn’t support with sewing machines due to fund deficiency. So, those women couldn’t utilize their gathered experience. BEDS is also thinking of different initiatives for improving the living standard of the women like making handicraft with local products, tailoring and so on.

In this situation, BEDS has taken an initiative to empower 50 women of Mathurapur village by developing their skill on sewing, handicraft making and also providing them equipments related to sewing through raising fund from GlobalGiving platform. The required budget for the project is 11,518 $ and so far 917 $ is raised from 21 donations. We hope to raise the entire fund of the project by 2020 and take proper initiative for women empowerment as described in the proposal.

So, it’s an appeal to all the donors for being kind to help those vulnerable women to give them a chance to come out from the cycle of poverty and create a new scope of job for the women in this region to live a righteous life.