“Now, wherever we go from our team, everyone listens to us with great interest and respect.”

Credit: Transform Trade/GMB Akash

Khuku Moni (centre)

Cyclones, flooding, saline soil… this is the reality of farming for Khuku Moni’s community in southern Bangladesh. She says these are all exacerbated by climate change:

“People are cutting down all the trees and using them as fuel in the industry or they’re cutting them down for their own profit. I think rich people are responsible for climate change. They are creating industrial mills everywhere while polluting the environment with plastics and waste all around these big industries. All this is destroying our environment.”

Khuku and her husband are fighting to earn a livelihood from farming against these challenges, to protect their families’ future.

“We have many dreams for our 3 daughters. We want to educate them. We joined this group hoping for a better future of our daughters. If our savings increase, we will be able to educate our girls with the money from those savings. It is our dream that our children will have a better life after completing their education.”

Khuku works as part of a group who try to combat these challenges by saving for emergencies, protecting their environment and learning best practices for farming in saline soil.

“We have 33 members in our group. We are all saving together so that we can survive with that money in case of any natural calamity. We have a bank account where our savings are deposited. We are each saving 100 taka every month. Together with our entire group we planted trees in our village. We always remind everyone in our village of the importance of planting trees. Every year from our group savings, we take the funds to buy the trees to plant in the village.”

Individual farmers like Khuku, isolated in rural areas often have no platform to voice their opinions, their fears for their land and livelihoods. By joining together, her groups’ voices are now being listened to by those in power,

“Earlier, an agricultural officer would not listen to us even if we called. We did not have the courage to go to any government office before. We are poor farmers! We used to be afraid to talk to any government officials for any reason. Now, wherever we go from our team, everyone listens to us with great interest and respect. We have strength by joining this group and now we can talk to people with courage and confidence. Now, no one can ignore us when we are 33 members that go to the authorities together.”

Khuku’s community prove the power of people coming together and speaking with one voice - so they can no longer be ignored.