Dropping out of school after a few short years, child labour and early marriage seem to be the only options for many Bangladeshi girls.
With little access to birth control, Bangladeshi families are large, so it is already hard to feed the household, let alone provide education for the children. Because of the male-dominant culture, girls, especially the older ones, are usually forced to give up school. Further, a dowry is obligatory, the amount of which increases as the bride gets older, and hence impoverished families try to marry off their girls young so to ease their financial burden.
Trisna is the second oldest child in her family – the eldest sister is already married and her younger siblings are at school. The whole family’s livelihood depends on the father’s meagre income as a security guard.
The parents do want education for Trisna but they lack the means – they even considered marrying off Trisna to alleviate the family burden.
In places like India, Nepal and Bangladesh, many girls drop out of school and earn income by sewing. Trisna belongs to a girls group in a youth development program of CEDAR’s partner, PARI. Through regular meetings, members learn about legal protections for underage girls and the shortcomings of early marriage; members also enhance their sewing skills there.
Yet Trisna’s biggest wish is to return to school. Encouraged by her group members, Trisna has started to save up money from her sewing for her own school fees. Her parents gladly let Trisna continue school if fees are not a problem, because they know that education leads to a better life.
Trisna’s father says, “I never imagine that anyone would help my daughter like this. Trisna has learned a lot from the group and I am very grateful for PARI’s help that Trisna can have a brighter future.”
[ePrayer – Pray for Children Ministry in Bangladesh]
Tanjila Akter, aged 19, is living in a village of Netrokona district, Bangladesh. With limited access of transportation, the literacy rate is relatively low in this area. Though Tanjila’s parents understood the importance of education, her father wanted to pull her out from school after she completed her secondary school education due to tight financial resources in their family. With the help of CEDAR partner PARI, Tanjila successfully convinced her father to allow her for higher education. Under PARI’s Community Adolescent Development Programme (CADP), Tanjila continued her study, sat for the Higher Secondary Certificate Exam, and obtained the highest score GPA 5 (A+) in the examination. She is the only student scored A+ in the college. Everyone is excited and happy with her results.
Tanjila was just one of the successful stories in the villages of Bangladesh. PARI has spent much efforts in the last few years in promoting civil education and it is very encouraging to see some solid change in the mindset of parents, religious leaders and those living in the remote villages. More adolescents including girls are now able to receive education. Through education, adolescents are more aware of the negative impact of early marriage. PARI witnesses a noticeable drop in early marriage cases and thank God for this improving situation.
CEDAR is also concerned about the kids in the slum areas of Dhaka. As families living in the urban slum areas cannot afford to pay for the educational expenses of their children, many kids become illiterate and end up as child labour or street children, being forced into a poverty cycle forever. To tackle this issue, CEDAR supported another partner World Concern Bangladesh to run 20 schools including primary and pre-school education in slum areas and to provide trainings to teachers. The aim is to let these schools self-sustain in the long-run so more children will be benefited.
In early this year many schools in the slum areas of Dhaka were suspended due to political instability before the country election. The political situation has become more stable after the election and schools have restored to normal. To enable more children in Dhaka to receive education, CEDAR has doubled the funding for the slum project this year. We look forward to seeing a better living condition for the kids and their families in the near future.
Pray for Children Ministry in Bangladesh:
Give thanks to the Lord that the girls in the villages are empowered and able to receive education, and the number of early marriage cases is gradually reducing.
Pray that the adolescents in Bangladesh will be able to continue their studies in a safe environment.
Pray for more wisdom granted to our Bangladesh partners so they know how to provide better support to the impoverished groups.
May God bless Bangladesh with peace and political stability so that the local churches and organizations can continue their work to help those in need.
[1] CEDAR is an approved charitable institutions and trusts of a public character under section 88 of the Inland Revenue Ordinance. Please click Inland Revenue Department website to check for details. [2] Donations over $100 are tax deductible in Hong Kong with our receipts. [3] Please DO NOT fax any donation information.
Kalapara lies in the southernmost part of Bangladesh, where each rainy season causes great concern to its inhabitants. Memories of past typhoons and floods bring fear: lives, crops and houses may not survive the coming ones.
‘Our villagers are mostly illiterate and have no knowledge of disaster prevention, so any natural hazard would result in heavy casualties and property loss.’ High-school girl Mitu told CEDAR’s partner World Concern Bangladesh about her village. Last May the whole village was anxious about surviving the coming storms but the fight against the latest level-10 cyclone rewrote the villagers’ fatalistic attitude to facing disasters.
From help-less to self-help
It was a frightening event when cyclone Mahasen directly hit Kalapara with winds of 90 km/h, flattening houses along the coast. Yet after the cyclone, residents were nonetheless thankful, and the community volunteers felt greatly encouraged. The disaster prevention and mitigation measures learnt from World Concern Bangladesh over the past three years have come into good use.
When the Bangladesh Meteorological Department forecasted that the tropical cyclone along Bangladesh’s southeast coastline had intensified to a hurricane-strength storm and was heading towards the southern coastal regions of Bangladesh, World Concern Bangladesh immediately contacted the area’s Community based Disaster Management Committees (CDMCs), launched emergency responses including issuing flag-warning and broadcasting, and summoned volunteer rescue and first aid teams, as well as preparing several shelters to be used.
‘One single flag hoisted by the village volunteer signifies that a natural disaster is coming, two flags warn people to look for a safe shelter nearby, and the highest warning of three flags means people should hide their possessions and dry foods under the floorboards and then hurry to a safe place immediately to save their lives.’ Mitu is one of those who learned this flag-warning mechanism and this helps illiterate villagers to identify different levels of disaster and respond accordingly.
Before Mahasen hit, the CDMCs managed to evacuate 4,000 villagers in time and no life was lost. This experience made the Kalapara residents see how they do not have to be helpless and resign themselves in face of a disaster – casualties can be prevented through communication, organisation and collaboration.
From disaster relief to disaster prevention
India faces as many disasters as Bangladesh. In July 2004, India’s Bihar State had the worst flooding in 50 years, affecting nearly 10,000 villages and 21 million people. Years of flooding have made Bihar State one of the poorest provinces in India.
CEDAR’s partner EFICOR has over 40 years of disaster relief experience and knows well that many rural communities of Bihar State have for a long time suffered in the vicious circle between disaster and poverty. EFICOR realises from experience that mere provision of disaster relief cannot deliver the affected communities out of their dire straits.
Since 2003, EFICOR has tried to promote community-based disaster management, setting up CDMCs made up of 7-10 resident representatives. They then liaise with the local government to relay the villages’ disaster prevention needs as well as assist in planning the regional disaster prevention strategies. Further, young villagers are organised into five special teams of warning, rescue, first aid, shelter management and relief management. The communities’ disaster prevention and resistance ability is raised through training and regular drills.
Residents of Bihar State at a rescue drill
Facing relentless disasters, the villagers no longer just look after themselves and are not passive victims anymore. Through disaster management and mitigation training, the villagers not only learn to effectively prevent and fight against disasters, they also learn to work with each other and consider other people’s needs. ‘Instead of each person thinking about his/her own needs, the villagers now think about how the community as a whole might benefit. For instance, instead of installing hand-pumps in front of every door-step, villagers now consider installing the hand-pumps in strategic locations realizing that this would help more people during the floods.’ An EFICOR worker says.
From sighing to collective planning
Since 2009, CEDAR has directly started disaster mitigation and management programmes in China’s Yunnan, Hubei and Sichuan etc., giving disaster prevention training to the local communities, churches and schools. Villagers there who had witnessed many disasters often told us, ‘There is not a year without a disaster.’ This shows how they strongly believed that they could not resist disasters coming their way.
Disaster mitigation training aims to break this age-old thinking. During the training the people will usually find possibilities and resources within their own community and assess their potential disaster resistance ability; at the same time they review recent disasters and plot the months and types of frequent occurrences thereby working out feasible disaster prevention strategies.
A Yunnan pastor who attended the training told us, ‘In the workshop we found out that fire hazards were the most frequent in our community and happened a lot at a certain time. So during the dry season we have voluntary rangers watching out for forest fires. Further, since some villagers can only speak local dialects, special volunteers are appointed who would listen to the radio broadcasts during the rainy season and then give early warning of flooding.’
Disasters may be relentless but there is a bond amongst people. We are emotionally touched when we learn of disasters far or near and are often ready to help with relief. But prevention is better than cure, so let us walk with potential victims by taking the earlier step of disaster prevention and mitigation.
Joy at receiving aid, but the fight does not end here.
Related information
Hazard is something natural or manmade that can cause danger, loss or casualty, such as earthquake, flooding, storm, epidemic, war and economic crisis. A hazard itself does not form a disaster; a disaster is caused when hazard is coupled with environmental vulnerability.
Vulnerability is the inability of people to forecast or resist hazards and recover from them due to potential factors which can be economical (unstable livelihood / lack of credit facility), natural (deficiency in natural resources), constructional (flaws in construction designs / building on unstable slopes), personal (illiteracy / marginalised groups / chronic illnesses) and social (social unrest / bad leadership).
Disaster management includes a series of interrelated disaster risk reduction programs: disaster prevention and resistance, post-disaster rescue and recovery, and disaster mitigation. Disaster mitigation composes of long-term actions taken to reduce immediate and potential hazards and vulnerabilities so as to mitigate the impacts of disasters upon the community and the environment; actions include promoting disaster resistance education, improving social and environmental planning and advocating disaster resistance strategies.
A regular drill taken by post-disaster first aid volunteers
[ ‘SHARE’ Mar-Apr 2014 -Taking Precaution ] STEP INTO THE WORLD
CEDAR is currently carrying out disaster management and mitigation programmes through her partners in China, Bangladesh and India, helping residents of frequent disaster areas to increase their disaster prevention and resistance ability and to reduce potential threats. Programmes include:
Providing community representatives with skills enhancement on pre-disaster forecasts, disaster management, evacuation, post-disaster rescue and first aid;
Setting up volunteer teams for pre-disaster forecasts, evacuation, post-disaster rescue and first aid;
Setting up disaster management committees to assess the communities’ disaster vulnerability and resistance ability, and organise communities to take disaster prevention measures;
Sponsoring the improvement of communities’ disaster prevention facilities.
After attending a CEDAR’s disaster prevention training, a teacher from Sichuan says, ‘Apart from adding knowledge on disaster prevention and emergency evacuation, I have also learned how to relay disaster prevention information to my students in daily teaching.’ Now the school has regular evacuation drills, so should disaster come unexpectedly, teachers and students can respond calmly.
Please support CEDAR’s ‘Emergency Relief and Disaster Preparedness Fund’, enabling CEDAR and her global partners to promptly respond to disasters and help impoverished areas carrying out disaster prevention work.
Villagers record time and frequencies of disasters to plan prevention.
[1] CEDAR is an approved charitable institutions and trusts of a public character under section 88 of the Inland Revenue Ordinance. Please click Inland Revenue Department website to check for details. [2] Donations over $100 are tax deductible in Hong Kong with our receipts. [3] Please DO NOT fax any donation information.
Cold wave is sweeping across countries in South and East Asia, including Bangladesh. Bangladesh has been reeling under bitter cold weather from mid-December 2013. Thick fog added with the lowering of temperature has been causing immense suffering to people. The wind blowing from the Himalayas has intensified the cold and will continue over North, North-West and South regions of the country. The meteorological office warns that another one or two cold wave will hit the country in this month. The lowest temperature of the country is likely to be 6.5°C – 9°C. The cold wave has also caused crop and other natural resource losses. Winter crop failures will result in greater poverty, poor dwellings, and seasonal unemployment.
CEDAR has granted HKD 46,800 to support partner KOINONIA to provide shawls to 2,350 people of 8 districts especially to the helpless cold victims, children and elderly people to save them from dying of cold chill and of diseases.
Support CEDAR’s Relief Work
CEDAR responds to the need of various disasters with ‘Emergency Relief & Disaster Preparedness Fund’. Please donate to support our relief work.
Emergency and Relief Donation
Please make cheque payable to ‘CEDAR FUND’
Deposit to HSBC A/C No. 600-385678-001, enclosing with the Pay-in slip
[1] CEDAR is an approved charitable institution and trust of a public character under section 88 of the Inland Revenue Ordinance. Please click Inland Revenue Department website to check for details. [2] Donations over $100 are tax deductible in Hong Kong with our receipts. [3] Please DO NOT fax any donation information.
Contact Method
Tel>23819627
Fax>23922777
Email>sharing@cedarfund.org
Add>G.P.O. Box 3212Hong Kong
5 January 2014 was the date of General Election in Bangladesh. Unrest in different scale took place before and after it. Weeks of conflict and violence caused over 100 dead, including the demonstrators and civilians.
In Bangladesh, demonstrations and conflicts are expected in the year of election as what was happened in the past. However, in this election, the ruling party amended the constitution and refused to set up an independent caretaker government to coordinate the general election. This ignited great discontent in the Opposition. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) believe that this would seriously jeopardize the fairness of the election and thus boycotted it. In the past months, BNP took a series of actions to resist the election, such as strike, protest, blocking the traffic, violence and fire attack. The government dispatched troops trying to stop the violent situation and deployed 50,000 soldiers to maintain order on the Election Day.
This General Election caused more serious turbulence and separation in the society than before. The poor turnout was blamed on fear of violence and the boycott. One voter said: ‘I want to go to vote, but I am afraid of violence. If the situation is normal and my neighbours go, I may go.’ Even if the voters were willing to vote, there was no gain in increasing the credibility of this election. Due to the boycott of the BNP, over one third of the 300 directly-elected seats went uncontested. Awami League (AL), the ruling party, won two third of the seats, easily becoming the majority government to form the cabinet. [BBC1] [BBC2] [BBC3]
Since Bangladesh was independent in 1971, there have been constant conflicts between these two parties bringing political instability. Facing the issues of unemployment, poverty, corruption, inflation, industrial accidents and human rights violence, the Bangladesh people are fervently looking for political and economic stability for a better living. Local Christians told us: ‘What we look for is a stable society. However, our living is seriously affected by the non-stop strike.’ They added: ‘The opposition party has been fighting to rule the country with the law of Islam, including prohibition on any non-Islamic religious practices and activities and deportation of all non-Islamic NGOs. We perceive threats and are scared of it.’
Meditate on Scripture:
‘Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and shun evil.’ (Proverbs 3:7) The ruling party amended the constitutions and sacrificed the fairness of the election to avoid losing its power. The opposition party launched the attack and sacrificed the stability of the society to fight for its power. Justice comes from the Word of God; love is founded on God’s Holy Covenant. May everyone bow down before His Mercy Seat to seek the Truth, and to govern the land according to His will for most benefits.
Pray for Stability in Bangladesh:
Pray that AL and BNP will resolve their conflicts in peace and fairness for the people’s well-being and survival.
Pray for God’s comfort, healing, peace and hope of stability fall upon the people who are affected by the turbulence.
Pray that the damaged areas in the country will be restored soon so people can return to their normal lives.
Pray that God will strengthen His churches and people and give them hope and faith to live out justice and love under this adversity.
