Disaster Risk Reduction - Bangladesh

DRR IN

Bangladesh In the southwestern areas of Bangladesh numerous villages remain permanently flooded while others get flooded regularly, particularly during high tide. The embankments continue to weaken and break at various points flooding new areas.

Thousands of people are still living in emergency shelters on road sides or river embankments. Drinking water is scarce in the whole region. The saline flood water from the coastal rivers has ruined soil fertility, reducing the likelihood of a return to agriculture in the near future.

savethechildren.net

Bangladesh is one of the most disaster prone countries in the world with a regular cycle of floods, storms and cyclones affecting millions of people – children in particular. In addition to this, according to the Global Climate Risk Index 2010, Bangladesh is the most vulnerable country in the world to the consequences of climate change. Disasters force many children to leave schools and take up hazardous jobs. Despite the heavy presence of humanitarian agencies and their remarkable disaster response capacities, understandings of children’s particular needs in emergency and mechanism to protect children from harms caused by disaster are weak.

Save the Children’s Presence in Bangladesh Left: A booklet in Bengali published and distributed to local communities explaining to people what to do to prepare for an emergency.

Right: In the southwestern areas of Bangladesh numerous villages remain permanently flooded while others get flooded regularly, particularly during high tide.

The embankments continue to weaken and break at various points flooding new areas.

Cover: In the southwestern areas of Bangladesh numerous villages remain permanently flooded while others get flooded regularly, particularly during high tide.

Over the past 3 years in Bangladesh, Save the Children has implemented 4 DRR programs with nearly $2.9 million USD from UNICEF, DEC, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Finland. Collectively the programs have reached over 220,000 children directly and over 1 million indirectly. Our programs have focused on building the capacity of children and communities to better respond and cope with disaster events.

Building the Capacity of the Humanitarian Assistance System Save the Children worked with the humanitarian assistance system in Bangladesh in order to meet children’s immediate and urgent needs during emergencies. The key elements of the project included training inputs to government and non-government disaster management personnel, establishing protocols and preparedness plans for children’s care and protection during disaster, and developing monitoring system to support rapid and effective child sensitive emergency response.

DRR and Education One of the most severe affects of the disasters is undoubtedly on the education of the children. In addition to the emotional strain of disrupted routines and normalcy, disasters destroy educational infrastructure and sweep away children’s books and school supplies making it difficult for them to resume educational activities even when facilities reopen. Therefore, Save the Children implemented the ‘Strengthening Preparedness and Response Capacity in Flood and Cyclone Prone Areas in Bangladesh’ to minimize the adverse effects of potential natural disasters on the education of children.

Save the Children provided material and infrastructure support to schools, including government primary schools, non-government schools, community schools, madrases, and some non government secondary schools. Through a participatory community based approach we supported the rehabilitation of schools and reduced the potential of future risks to the education system at the local level. We built a comprehensive emergency preparedness and response mechanism for education at the local level, which we hope can be replicated and scaled up in future. In addition, to address the needs of out of school children we worked with children’s/youth groups.

The early recovery education programme identified the need to re-stabilise the education system and address the psychosocial well being of children. Save the Children promoted child-friendly schools in selected districts through quality child centred educational practices. We addressed the immediate and some of the long-term effects of cyclones on the education sector. The child centred educational practices include supplying teaching-learning and recreational materials in selected schools, repairing and rehabilitation support to selected schools, and capacity building of key stakeholders including teachers and students on disaster risk reduction, child protection and psychosocial care to children affected by the cyclone.

savethechildren.net