This gift in action
Every year during the monsoon season – September to March – flooding and waterlogging threaten the homes and water systems of people living in south-west Bangladesh. The result is a lack of clean water and sanitation facilities, with many people suffering from severe water-borne diseases such as diarrhoea and dysentery.
Since 2000, Sakina Katun's family have been regularly forced out of their home in Mathpara by floods. Although the family had a well, it was often contaminated by floodwater, forcing Sakina to travel to collect safe drinking water.
Oxfam has helped to install a new deep hand-pump well on a raised platform near Sakina's house. The well is protected from floodwater and the family and the local community can still get to it during flooding.
This construction was part of a wider Oxfam project to improve the supply of safe drinking water and the health of 20,000 people living in 12 rural communities.
The well not only provides safe, clean water, but it enables local people – particularly women, whose job it usually is to collect water – to spend their time more productively, as Sakina explains: "Now that we no longer have to spend three hours every day carrying water, we can dedicate [that time] to our family, our children. And thanks to Oxfam we have been saved from having to move home every time it floods."