Site Visit to Gournadi

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I spent two days visiting one of Tarango’s longest standing projects in southern Bangladesh.

Tarango started working in this village in the 1980s and has assisted with an assortment of projects from putting in their first road, securing homes against floods, microloans, and jute production.

Our reason for visiting is that a partner NGO is going to assist the village with skills to combat their increasing months of rains and high water. The women can only produce the jute products 6 months of the year as the remaining months are too wet. Much of the jute production is done at home so women can work while still caring for their family. During the rainy months their homes are not dry making production impossible.

The women and families need a source of income in the remaining months. While fishing is a natural option, not everyone can do this one industry especially when exporting to neighboring communities is very difficult because the roads are not passable during much of the wet season.

While I was at the center I visited with the women who chose to come to the facility to work. Many of these women have grown children and come for the socialization. Two women had daughters that were doctors, several others had daughters that are nurses as well as an assortment of higher education occupations. They said they would not have been able to pay for their children's higher education without their production work and access to micro loans.

In the evening there was a large meeting to discuss economic opportunities for the families during the rainy season. Tarango and Clear Global plan to partner on this project. The areas they plan to focus on is teaching the women to create floating vegetable gardens and assisting the women to construct floating poultry coops. The floating coops would allow them to raise chickens and ducks during the rainy season with the added benefit that the poultry poop acts as a natural food source for the fish.

Bangladesh’s first President, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was born close to this village so we visited his home. Rahman along with most of his family and staff were killed in his home in Dhaka in 1975 as part of a renegade army officers. Two of his daugthers were out of the country at the time and so survived. Rahman’s eldest daughter Sheikh Hasina has been Prime Minister of Bangladesh since 2009.

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