Buy from Tonic and support Aarong's rural artisans

This holiday season, give and receive with a bracelet from Tonic made by rural artisans from BRAC's Aarong shop. The bracelets are silver with a soft cloth band and each contain a message of harmony, including Peace, One Love, Karma, and Coexist.

Click here to support Aaron by purchasing a bracelet from the Tonic website.

Aarong, a fair-trade organization created by BRAC in 1978, is ubiquitous in urban centers across the country. Created to help alleviate poverty, Aarong plays the crucial role of the protector and promoter of Bangladeshi handicrafts and craft producers. Reaching out to weavers, potters, brass workers, jewelers, jute workers, basket weavers, wood carvers, leather workers and more, Aarong embraces and nurtures a diverse representation of 65,000 artisans, 85% of whom are women. Aarong provides jobs and benefits to rural artisans by creating and sustaining a market for innovative and stylish products. Aarong's earnings go directly into developing the company and financing BRAC's development programs in health, education and economic and social development.

Fatema and the Story of the Cyclone Baby

Fatema had no problem thinking of a name for her daughter; her name is Bonna, which means flood. Bonna was born on the night that Cyclone SIDR ravaged Bangladesh.

Fatema recalled the night of the storm “I delivered my child, the wind was blowing and the water was rising fast.” Her eldest son started screaming and pulling his mother, begging her to leave as the water rushed through the windows. “We tried to get everything together [to leave], but the water was already at my hip.”

Her husband smashed the door just to find a way out against the pressure of the storm, but as soon as they left the house, their son was swept away by the immense force of the water. At this moment, her husband put his new daughter’s life above everything else. “My husband gave our baby to a neighbor,” Fatema explained, “and he said, ‘we’re not going to live, please try to save my daughter.’”

“We thought we were going to die.”

Fatema’s neighbor managed to pass Bonna on to another family, who found a way to get her to a shelter. Their son was fortunately picked up by a different family, given new clothes, and cared for during the night. As for Fatema and her husband, they managed to find their way to a local commissioner’s house, where they waited until dawn. After the storm calmed, they made their way to a shelter, where they were reunited with the rest of their family.

When Fatema and her family returned home, “there was nothing; no place to sit, no place to cook. All the houses were destroyed.” She lost her family photos, her clothing, furniture, four goats and 10 chickens.

Within a few days, “BRAC people came to us and everyone in our village to see what we’d lost and what we needed.” BRAC provided food and other essentials, as Fatema recalled, “They gave us rice and other food. If they hadn’t, we might have died from hunger.”

BRAC also worked with other NGOs to rebuild her house and gave her two goats, one of which was pregnant. “I’m very happy to receive these goats,” she said. “We will raise them, and when they’re older, we will sell them to the market and earn some money.”

Fatema and her family have received help since the tragedy of SIDR but life is still not easy or predictable. Her husband continued his pre-SIDR trade of selling fish in the market, but currently few people are willing to spend much money on fish. “I want to educate my children, but it’s not possible right now,” Fatema explained. In the face of hardship, she continues to be positive as she says with a broad smile, “[BRAC is] going to give us chickens soon.” She retains her captivating smile and sincere conviction that things will improve soon thanks to her tenacity and a little help from BRAC.

BRAC Cyclone SIDR Emergency Relief and Rehabilitation One Year Anniversary Report

On the afternoon of November 15, 2007, Cyclone SIDR struck the southwestern coast of Bangladesh taking 3,447 lives (including 301 BRAC members) and inundating nearly 1.5 million homes with water. Within hours of SIDR moving inland from the coast of Bangladesh, more than 240 BRAC health workers were on the ground to treat storm victims, many of whom had clung to trees for hours to avoid being swept away in SIDR’s powerful storm surge. On the day after the storm, BRAC assembled and dispatched 13 well-equipped emergency medical teams to reach more storm victims and ensure that seriously injured storm victims received the advanced care they would need to survive. BRAC also took steps to avert a greater health crisis by ensuring access to clean water and sanitary latrines.

By the beginning of January, most of the international relief organizations that arrived in the wake of the storm had left or begun wrapping up their operations. BRAC committed to undertake substantial long-term rehabilitation efforts in four sub-districts in the SIDR-affected area—one within each of the four most-devastated districts. The purpose of BRAC’s livelihood rehabilitation program is to support the people of Bangladesh who survived the cyclone, but lost their houses and means of earning income.

Click here to read the full report of BRAC’s relief and rehabilitation activities (PDF).

As natural disasters, from floods to cyclones, occur more often due to climate change BRAC needs to be prepared. Your support can help make this happen.

One (iodized) salt packet at a time

The New York Times recently published an op-ed by Nicholas Kristof titled ‘Raising the World’s I.Q’. The op-ed highlighted problem of Iodine deficiency - people in the developing world not getting enough iodine from food and water. Iodine Deficiency Disorder (IDD) can cause significant health problems like Goitre (enlargement of thyroid glands), cretinism, and deficiency specifically among pregnant women can developmental delays in children.

As Nick explains in the op-ed, the solution is remarkably simple:

Development geeks rave about the benefits of adding iodine and other micronutrients (such as vitamin A, iron, zinc and folic acid) to diets. The Copenhagen Consensus, which brings together a panel of top global economists to find the most cost-effective solutions to the world’s problems, puts micronutrients at the top of the list of foreign aid spending priorities.

In Bangladesh, through its health program, BRAC had witnessed first hand the large number of people suffering from iodine deficiency; therefore, it created a salt enterprise in 2001 to help fulfill the need for iodized salt throughout the country. At the time, there was a large gap between the demand and supply of iodized salt. Moreover, much of the salt available in the local villages was not properly iodized, only sold in bulk and due to unhygienic production processes, not suitable for human consumption. BRAC established a salt manufacturing plant in coordination with UNICEF and The Micronutrient Initiative (a Canadian initiative highlighted in Nick’s op-ed piece). In BRAC’s view, iodized salt was not just a consumer product sold in grocery stores, but also a health product with significant medical benefits. So, BRAC began distributing the iodized sale through its large army of Community Health Volunteers (CHVs) who sold the salt along with other health products to villagers for a small commission. This also ensured that BRAC would be able to reach people in remote areas that usually had no other access to properly iodized salt. Today BRAC produces and distributes 10,000 metric tons of iodized salt annually in Bangladesh.

In the last two decades, Bangladesh had made immense progress in reducing Iodine deficiency and expanding the usage of iodized salt. The success is attributed to favorable government policy combined with the efforts of non-profits like UNICEF, the Micronutrient Initiative and BRAC. However, the work is not over yet and BRAC’s health volunteers continue to reach the remotest and poorest regions of the country ending iodine deficiency, one salt packet at a time.