Speeches Shim
Farida Begum is proud of her contribution to her family and to her community as a worker on the road repair project. She is one of 4,790 beneficiaries in Bangladesh providing lasting support for their communities through cash-for-work projects. “I can see that my village is being developed, and so am I.’’
Md. Habib, Md. Jahid, Md. Abual Hossen, and Md. Abul Hossain are four of the unsung heroes in Bangladesh’s rapid response to COVID-19. They are, quite literally, driving the response—every day, all over the capital city. They are the ones who suit up and help collect specimens to track the virus and keep others safe.
The U.S. government, through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has provided over $22 million to complement the Government of Bangladesh’s ongoing efforts to prepare and respond to the spread of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). This funding builds on more than $1 billion in health assistance provided to Bangladesh over the past 20 years and underscores the long-term U.S. commitment to ensuring access to quality, lifesaving health services for all people in Bangladesh.
In northeast Bangladesh, up near the border with India, you find a mosaic of habitats: rivers, streams and irrigation canals, large areas of seasonally flooded cultivated plains and hundreds of wetlands with still water. Large areas are covered by wetlands that between May to October transform into massive bodies of deep water.
It is uniquely beautiful here, even picturesque—but it is not an not easy place to live and nurture a family. Just ask Tahmina Begum, a wife and mother caring for her large family in the village of Birnagar. She could tell you what it feels like to stare down an impending disaster when the rains come. Wind whips wildly and water gushes from nearby mountains, generating waves in the wetlands when the haor is full that in turn surround and erode the raised mounds of earth—called atis—upon which people live.
In Bangladesh, young party leaders reach across the aisle for better and more constructive collaboration. Playing a supporting role, the USAID-funded Strengthening Political Landscape (SPL) activity has convened Bangladeshis for cross-party training sessions and events under the Young Leaders Fellowship Program (YLFP). The 352 YLFP graduates, who studied leadership, internal party democracy, party constitutions, advocacy, public speaking, and communications, are shunning confrontation and working across party lines to address problems affecting Bangladeshis.
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