Promoting Natural Farming Practices in Bangladesh

Empowerment means the process by which any man or woman is given power or authority to Participate in earning money and decision making. Empowerment of women is thus a process through which women in general and poor women, in particular, get the opportunity to join the workforce and contribute to family income and take part in decision making. In Bangladesh, there is lots of barriers for women to get employed. Basically, women in Bangladesh are the worst sufferers. The women of Mathurapur village 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. Cyclone Amphan lashed out in this area in 20 May, 2020 and several structures are damaged. In this struggling situation, women of the village lead a miserable life which is deprived of basic rights of food, cloth, health, sanitation, law and so on. The village women used to struggle with poverty. They do not have enough to earn their basic needs. Sometimes they put their life on risk to collect Sundarbans resources so that they can earn some money to get some food and education for their children.

Bangladesh Environment and Development Society (BEDS) has been working 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. But they are unable to perform such activity by the lack of money and proper training. 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 897 $ is raised from 19 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 an appeal to all the donors for being kind to help those struggling women to give them a chance to come out from the cycle of poverty and lead a respectful and healthy life.