A new awareness for the UNESCO World Heritage Site
For some years now, Rehana Begum has witnessed a shift in attitudes and behaviour, both in herself and in others. She is now a member of a women’s group as well as a village conservation forum. Since 2015, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH has been working with local partners to get people involved in protecting the mangrove ecosystem. Workshops and training sessions have looked at ways to benefit from nature without destroying it. Women in particular have received support in playing a greater role in their communities. These activities have reached around 35,000 households and over 2,000 women.
For seven years now, Rehana Begum and her husband have been fishing without chemicals. And they no longer take wood from the Sundarbans to cook with, mostly using gas that they buy in canisters from the local bazaar instead. Otherwise they use wood from trees in the immediate vicinity of their house. The Begum family grows vegetables in front of their home and keeps cows, goats and chickens. This covers their own food needs and still leaves them some surplus to sell. This is an important factor for residents such as the Begum family: ‘The involvement of the local forest authorities and other groups makes it easier for us to find different ways of earning money.’
Contact with the Forest Department has improved overall, says Rehana Begum. ‘Now, if we see any wild animals in or near our village, we inform the Department so that they can catch them and return them to the forest.’
Her activities have inspired her brother, who now works as a volunteer with the community patrol group in the area. He helps preserve the forest by going on patrol with employees of the Forest Department to protect trees and wildlife.
Rehana Begum has not only developed a different approach to nature. Since becoming actively involved in the village community her self-confidence has grown. She has learned to write her name and to read the Qur’an. ‘I used to be too helpless and vulnerable to have any dreams. The women here would work their whole lives with their husbands, but were never given a share of the income or family decision-making. That has changed now.’
Her husband Khaleq Hawlader, who has been listening, nods. He was won over by his wife’s sense of purpose after she attended the workshops and courses. He encouraged her efforts to learn more, and he appreciates the fact that she now teaches children in the neighbourhood to recite the Qur’an and even earns some money from doing so.
