Bangladesh floods

How Oxfam is helping communities in Bangladesh respond to a recurring crisis.

Trawl through world news reports from the past decade, and you’ll find the same natural disaster mentioned time and again. Bangladesh floods.

For the people of Bangladesh, floods are a recurrent fact of life. When floods happen, it’s poor communities, often living in fragile homes in vulnerable areas, who are hardest hit.

Now, climate change is making Bangladesh floods more frequent – and more severe.

Responding to Bangladesh floods

Whenever the floods arrive, Oxfam responds fast. We support families with immediate food and shelter – providing simple things like buckets, cooking utensils, and hygiene kits to prevent disease, and working with local people to help get their lives back to normal.

Sufia in front of her newly raised home. [Photo credit: Dan Chung] We also work with communities to adapt their way of living so that the impact of future floods in Bangladesh is reduced. Helping families to raise their homes above flood levels. Building flood-proof latrines. Providing communities with seeds that can grow and flourish in floods. And working tirelessly to ensure poor people are less at risk, and better placed to cope. People like Sufia (above).

In the Bangladesh floods of 2007, Sufia Begum’s five-year old son was washed away. Despite a frantic search, Sufia never found her son. Now, with Oxfam’s support, she has raised the level of her home and can keep her family safe. Sufia says, “Now my house has been raised, I can stay with my children on a dry place during flood. I feel very happy about it.”

Being prepared

In Bangladesh, floods are frequent. To enable our vital work in the region to continue, we rely on constant funding from supporters – and you can help.

By supporting Oxfam’s work in Bangladesh, you will help provide basic measures like raising wells and latrines, improving people’s lives and long-term options by training both women and men, supporting education, introducing flood and drought resistant seeds, and working alongside local government to improve emergency support.

And you can support our ongoing disaster reduction work through Oxfam’s project - ensuring that when the next Bangladesh floods arrive, local communities are prepared.