Turning compost into lifelines
When your farmland is turned to sand, how do you survive?
Floods in Bangladesh don't just destroy homes, villages and lives when they arrive - they also leave a crippling legacy when the waters subside. The 'char' - the silted sand plains that the floods leave behind - are too infertile for even the most skilled farmer to tend.
Left with no food stored for the future, no food to sell at the local market, no food even to feed their families, the people of Gaibandha once had no option but to pray that food aid would arrive at their village in time.
Rather than 'writing off' the land, we've been working with farmers to develop a solution as simple as it is effective. Holes. Thousands and thousands of holes, each no more than a metre across, dug into the sand bars, then filled with compost. Into these, farmers are able to plant between four and six gourd seeds per hole - from which can grow up to 10 gourds that the families can eat, store, even sell to make money they can put towards medicine, clothes, livestock or schooling for their children.
It's not only an idea that can transform a previously desolate sand bar into a field rich with pumpkins, it's one that transform lives. And if you're able to make gift to Practical Action today, we'll be able to extend projects like these anywhere struggling against poverty.
See the impact of our work in Gaibandha on video
"The floods took everything from me and my family. Now we have a future again."
However, after seeing a demonstration of how crops could be grown on sand bars run by Bepen Kabir, one of Practical Action's community extensionists (knowledge and skills trainers), Mriza set his heart on doing the same. With Bepen's technical support, assistance from Practical Action and the help of his entire family, Mriza was able to cultivate 560 compost pits. From those, he was able to grow an amazing 5,640 sweet gourds to eat, to store and to sell. As you can see from his words above, it has made a huge difference to his family. But there are so many other families living in poverty like Mriza. If you're able to help Practical Action's work with a gift today, you could be helping us reach out to even more of them. 
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Mriza Rahim has seen at first hand the help your support could provide. Twelve years ago, Mriza and his family lost everything when the river Tista engulfed his land and assets. Since then he has struggled to feed his children by working as a manual labourer - though the work was sporadic and the money was poor. Often the family simply went hungry for weeks on end.
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