Blog

Yesterday, it was foggy winter morning when we set out to Modhupur, Tangail, located in central part of Dhaka Division. The temperature was so low that we all were literally shivering. We were 9 from different organisations under one platform – the women forum. On January 8, we travelled from Dhaka to Modhupur to protest recent rape of incident. We were looking to take part in a human chain, a press meet and also to speak with people concerned. But, we were fully unaware that Modhupur has planned something else for us!

When I was applying for the Inspirator Program, I was very unsure of what my specific job would be. Then I read this “Inspirators are a boost to local partner organizations to help them focus, re-think or just being better at implementing specific activities through shared learning and critical reflection. It is thus essential that the Inspirator can provide and outside perspective and present new ideas.” Sound interesting and impossible at the same time. How can I provide insight to an already functioning organization? But still I applied, and then when I was approached by the MENA regional office to join them in helping build the Activista Arabia Network.

Doha COP18 will go down in history as the COP that incorporated Gender in the main negotiation text. The draft circulated co chairs of SBI Agenda 21, which was prepared with contributions from many, especially Mary Robinson, and circulated by EU, was opened for consultation on 29th of November. After two days of consultations among delegates from participating countries a draft text was submitted for consideration in SBI with the suggestions that it go to COP.

4th of August: a team of ‘humans’ leaves Dhaka in the early hours… destination a ‘popular’ place in Faridpur. Sightseeing? That and more… Trust me when I tell you that the visiting friends from Italy (a Comms. colleague, a holding-it-just-fine journalist and a how-do-I-put-it photographer) did taste a bit of Dhaka traffic even though all that they did was to touchdown, get terminal clearance and pick us (Jamal and Hamid – names we picked up along the way) up from home to leave the city.

After an hour and a half on Dhaka’s crowded roads where the kamikaze bus driver is king, I reach Chanpara slum in Roopgong, just outside of the Bangladeshi capital. The corrugated iron huts are home to 40,000 people – a small slum by Bangladeshi standards – but the problems faced by the residents of Chanpara slum are huge. With shared toilets and bathing areas, and no street lighting, the dark alleys of this slum hold many dangers for the women and girls of the slum.

… purpose, which was only their personal gain and nothing further. Youth were intentionally overlooked for long and it became a practice to accept the societal structure as it was. But being in the same system few youngsters were exceptions and broke the cycle as they decided not to be disregarded for their dreams anymore. Not only did they start a new trend followed by many others, they brought in immense development. Yes! It was the golden Era of Youth revolution and I was so thrilled to have witnessed it.

Being a non-government human rights-based development organization, we, ActionAid always prefers to play the role of facilitator in bringing change and supplement and complement the government’s initiative. Our conviction to work with the government was further strengthened while I was in Tala (sub-district) in Satkhira on 18th April, 2012 along with our Country Director, Farah Kabir. She was there to visit the activities of our ECHO-funded project Emergency Assistance Support to Water Logging Affected Populations in Tala of Satkhira.

The recent experience from the field-visit to Faridpur has sketched deep mark on my mind when I saw community people reaping the benefit of the initiatives at the very inception of a project because of comprehensiveness and farsightedness in the plan. It was a cluster village comprising 10 newly-constructed tin-shed houses on raised plinth with a sanitary latrine for each, four deep tube-wells, cattle and homestead garden under Sukur Sikdarer Dangi village in Faridpur Sadar Upazila (sub-district)

Farah Kabir, ActionAid Bangladesh’s Country Director Farah was speaking in a talk jointly organized by ActionAid and Expo 2015 in the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro on June 17. Participants discussed how to bring changes in the food production system in order to eradicate hunger and, in the process, promote women’s rights and protect the environment mitigating climate change impacts.