Access to potable water for coastal people

2.1 billion people of the world are suffering from the access of safe drinking water (Ref: WHO and UNICEF).People of the Sundarbans coastal region of Bangladesh are very poor and they have been suffering from various social and environmental issues. Scarcity of safe drinking water is one of the major problems for these marginalized people. Now water is turning into brackish to saline gradually. Climate Change exacerbates the situation due to sea level rise, erratic rainfall, high rate of evaporation and various disastrous events like cyclone and flood, increased down-steam saline water flow instead of up-steam freshwater water flow, shrimp farming etc. So, before monsoon starts, people in coastal area travel up to 3-4 km to fetch water, which is not always sufficiently safe enough to drink due to saline and sediment contamination in shallow and deep aquifers. Pond and rainwater is the main source of drinking water for the coastal people of Bangladesh. But number of freshwater ponds is not enough for the community to meet up their drinking water demand. Women have to spend most of the time of a day to collect drinking water. In the dry season water level of the ponds goes down and sometimes gets dried. So, water crisis becomes acute. Moreover, coastal people frequently suffer from waterborne diseases because of drinking pond water without purification.  

Bangladesh Environment and Development Society (BEDS) is a community based non-profit, non-government and development organization. BEDS has been working in the Sundarbans coastal region since 2013 for the socio-economic development of the coastal people. So far, BEDS re-excavated three ponds and established three Solar powered Pond Sand and filter system in Banishanta union under Dacope sub district of Khulna district of Bangladesh. But due to increased intensity of salinity, PSF system does not produce clean and safe water. So, BEDS installed two Reverse Osmosis systems with Water ATM in this union to provide safe drinking water to the underprivileged villagers. Around 5,500 people are getting drinking water facilities from those systems now. But those system are not enough to satisfy the water demand of all the people of the union. So, BEDS would like to install two more reverse osmosis system Reverse Osmosis systems with Water ATM beside its previously re-excavated ponds. This is why BEDS is trying to raise fund through GlobalGiving platform by the name of a project entitled ‘Drinking Water for coastal people in Bangladesh’. Target grant of the proposed project is 30,560 $ and so far, 978 $ is raised from 22 donations. By the year 2020, we would like to raise the whole fund for the project and initiate for solving the drinking water problem of the Sundarbans coastal community.

We would like to thank all our donors for their continuous support. We do hope that you will continue to be in the side of the deprived villagers to reduce their sufferings of safe drinking water.