The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in an unprecedented economic crisis globally. Developing nations such as Bangladesh are challenged with negative impacts on all fronts including import-export, remittances, domestic industries and services, and small and medium enterprises.

Needless to say, families living in poverty are affected the most by the pandemic-induced crisis as they are dependent on daily or weekly income to bring food to the table. Income earners in these families (such as day laborers, rickshaw-pullers, house-help, street vendors, and factory workers) are currently faced with devastating losses in working hours and employment due to the pandemic-induced economic crisis.

Even in the best of circumstances, these low-income earning families struggle to afford all of their basic necessities. The pandemic is impacting the already tight budget as they are unable to stockpile extra food or medicine in the event of sudden illness or quarantine.

Our goal during this pandemic is to ensure those living in poverty can access food, and that our partner organizations can provide this food in a healthy and safe way. Your donation can help us reach this goal and secure food for a family in need.

Read our distribution reports

The 60-Day & 90-Day report contains fund distribution recipient information.

Over a thousand people including children are engaged in the generational profession of collecting resalable garbage from Matuail* landfill in the southern outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh, earning USD 2 or less per day. Most children engaged in this profession are held back from education and exposure to the outside world.
Gram Bangla Unnayan Committee, our partner organization, runs a school where at least 200 children living off the Matuail landfill come to study and eat nutritious meals.

The COVID-19 outbreak, however, has caused a major interruption to this initiative and induced a food crisis for these children. This is why we are implementing a food drive to provide them with one home-cooked nutritious meal per day, three days a week until they are able to go back to work and our partner’s school.

Our initial plan is to have this food drive run from mid-June through the end of September 2020. We may extend our project if the partial lockdown in the city continues and/or the economic crisis worsens.

*Matuail is the largest landfill in Dhaka city, where on an average 5000 tonnes of waste are deposited every day. Dhaka, a city of over ten million people, generates 65% of the country’s waste, making Matuail the largest landfill in the country as well.