Every morning I am woken by Hawa. In Bengali, hawa means breeze, but that’s not what I am referring to. I’m talking about my part-time domestic worker called Hawa. Hawa migrated from Mymensingh to Dhaka with her mother and sister in 2009. They came to Dhaka to work as domestic workers to provide for their family, while the men in their family stayed back in the village. Hawa never went to school. She cannot read or write.
There are 232 million people living outside their country of origin, and Samina Begum from Bangladesh was almost one of them. There is an estimated 8 million Bangladeshis working abroad, sending back remittances of around 12bn USD. This year alone, another 1.4 million – almost 1 percent of the country’s population – joined them.
Moksedul, a Bangladeshi migrant worker who resided in Qatar for three years, almost believed that his voice was never to be heard; that his stories would remain untold. In fact, it almost came as a shock to him when he was asked to get up on stage and speak up, and speak up he did.
As global leaders gather in Geneva, Switzerland, for the Global Refugee Forum on 13-15 December 2023, BRAC Global’s Executive Director, a global champion in safeguarding people on the move, is calling for policy direction and investment to address climate displacement and support adaptation initiatives in the global south. With the climate crisis unfolding into a global emergency, how do we support communities to build climate resilience?
As global leaders gather in Paris for The Summit for a New Global Financing Pact on 22-23 June, BRAC and Groupe SOS directors, two global champions of social entrepreneurship, are calling for large scale investment in innovations in countries on the frontlines of social, environmental and climate crises – not only because it is the right thing to do, but because it is the smart thing to do.
The Community Fort for Resisting COVID-19 project is a protracted effort to contain the virus within communities in Bangladesh, by equipping 81 million people across 35 high-risk districts with the tools and knowledge to keep themselves and their families safe. The project is implemented by a coalition of organisations who work at the community level. BRAC sat down with one of the partners, the Embassy of Switzerland in Bangladesh:
Bangladesh is emerging out of its worst wave of the pandemic. Daily infection rates have dropped below 10% for the third day in a row. Schools are set to re-open after the longest closure in the world, and BRAC is supporting the Government of Bangladesh’s push for mass vaccination. Read more from Asif Saleh, Executive Director of BRAC:
As COVID-19 continues to disrupt economies around the globe, the number of people living in urban poverty is increasing at an alarming rate. Urban contexts present unique challenges to poverty that require contextualised, adaptable interventions. Learn how BRAC is helping communities living in urban poverty address these challenges.
Bangladesh has been often called the ground zero of climate change.
Geographically located at one of the world’s largest deltas, with more tropical cyclones occurring than any other country, means that its population of 163 million deal with the impacts brought on by the changing climate every day. On World Environment Day 2021, we look at five examples from BRAC on how to adapt to climate change.
A saying goes in Africa: “If you think you are too small to make a difference, you have not spent a night with a mosquito”. The five millimetre species has overwhelmed humankind for over 500,000 years, making it one of the world’s deadliest antiquated disease-carriers. Bangladesh, however, has made remarkable progress over the past 50 years in battling malaria, one of the most deadly diseases the mosquito carries.
Bangladesh ranks seventh in the global top ten most affected countries in the climate risk index 2021 report. Approximately 13.3 million Bangladeshis are estimated to be displaced by 2050 due to climate change impacts. To combat challenges of climate-induced disasters, learning from the past can be instrumental in reducing risks and better support people living in ultra-poverty.
We are exploring the Climate Bridge Fund, a unique climate financing mechanism in Bangladesh that supports non-governmental organisations directly responding to people displaced by climate change.