6. Bangladesh Rural Trishal Project Visit

I visited the other Australian Aid funded project in a northern rural community of Bangladesh called Trishal, which is also supported by our corporate partner ANSA homes in Australia.  In one year only Habitat for Humanity (HFH) Bangladesh with implementing partner RRF (Rural Reconstruction Foundation) are building 42 new houses with toilets and 60 stand-alone household toilet facilities in a community with significant issues of sanitation and quality of housing.  

New house under construction with family soon to move back in.

The HFH Bangladesh, HFH Australia, and RRF team at Trishal, accompanied by my security detail!

New housing with toilet under construction.

Before and after toilets, open defecation is common in Bangladesh... The new toilets include enclosed concrete tanks to receive effluent, instead of remaining open to the local air or drained into local pond areas.  The squat toilets are culturally appropriate as the common form of latrine in rural Bangladesh.

These physical interventions are being implemented across 3 villages with around 900 households each, with beneficiary families prioritised according to their level of need as identified through HFH Bangladesh's analysis of the comprehensive survey of all households undertaken by RRF.

The construction components are combined with training for the beneficiary families and other local community members in the importance of water, sanitation and hygiene in the community as well as training in appropriate construction to raise awareness for families of how to respond to maintenance needs as they arise in the future.

Once again it is the community’s overwhelmingly enthusiastic attitude towards the project that has been my most encouraging observation, as well as to see the ‘before and after’ of interventions with construction well underway to complete the project deliverables before the end of June.

The rural communities in Bangladesh are noticeably more conservative than in Dhaka, so it was a real privilege to be able to speak with both men and women about the anticipated changes in their family’s quality of life when the interventions are completed. 

The members of the community were so warmly receptive of my visit presenting me with flowers and treating me with rather excessive respect (according to my cultural background), but which I strive to accept with the same love and humility with which it is offered.

This all should not overstate the limited success compared with the overall scale of poverty, horrendous living conditions and very poor health of families and communities across Bangladesh. I visited numerous communities and projects in other parts of the country too, that we are not currently supporting, including previous projects supported by Australian Aid now completed, Ahmed Family Foundation, KOICA (Korean Development Agency) and others, including in a region call Banshkhali. 











I have seen desperate need for improved housing and sanitation across the country, despite Bangladesh's national economic figures showing significant and consistent growth for many years.  It is essential that we think about housing not just as houses, but as a more holistic concept as the United Nations prescribe when defining what adequate housing means, including access to basic services which includes water and sanitation.  I have seen a man lying down on the ground inside his house unable to move, sick with stomach problems, caused by an extremely unsanitary environment with open defecation all around the home.  I have seen children with skin infections, caused by bathing in, or obtaining water for bathing from, small pond water that is shared by various other families and that becomes contaminated with effluent from open toilets when the monsoon season comes.  

It is therefore imperative that we continue to grow the work in communities like these so the future of children like these is not compromised by illness and worse. In short, there is a lot more work to be done.