Climate change means that people in Bangladesh are facing disruption in their lives due to heavier monsoons and rising tides.

Climatologists warn that the heating up of the earth’s atmosphere is making the country one of the most vulnerable to rising sea levels, coping with ever more devastating floods much more often. This means that populations have to adapt to fast changing seasons and freak weather conditions. But most of those affected on the front line, live without electricity or televisions, so have never even heard of ‘climate change’.

Many of the villages affected in Hatibandha, a remote region in northern Bangladesh, are located on silt islands, known locally as chars, which are created in a vast delta by the swell of rivers, monsoon rains and sand carpeting. The lives of the char people are bound up with the flow of rivers such as the Teesta, as the islands undergo constant erosion and reformation.

More than two million of some of Bangladesh’s poorest people are isolated in this ever changing terrain, living with the frequent risk of flooding.

Read more about this story at the Plan UK website

Posted by AndyK on 28/07/08

Orphan children from the SOS Nursery School Blantyre has been helping overcome the food crisis in Malawi by growing their own crops. The children are helped in sowing different crops in their gardens. Their favorite crop that was sown was carrots. The children were amazed to see the small seed being sown and how it could grow into a carrot as they were seeing on pictures. They patiently watered the crop for over 40 days.

On one sunny day it was time to harvest their crop. You could see the look of bewilderment on their faces when they saw the beautiful orange carrots being uprooted. Little Chisomo, 4 hears old, was so amazed that he asked his teacher: "Who put the carrot in the ground? I thought we put a small black thing in the ground"? The teacher explained once again to Chisomo and the other children how the carrot came about. In the garden there are also some vegetables and a good crop of maize. The children ate the carrots at school and some took theirs to share with their families.

Some parents came to the nursery and expressed their appreciation to the teaching staff saying how the children enjoyed cultivating crops at this early age because agriculture is the backbone of our economy here in Malawi. Children will grow up knowing the benefits of the agriculture industry and later practice it when they are grown.

Read more abut this story at the SOS website

Posted by AndyK on 28/07/08