To save you looking it up on Wikipedia.
Bangladesh is the 8th most populated country in the world with 160 million people with 1033 people per square kilometre.
Borders India, Burma and the Bay of Bengal.
34 percent of the population is under 15 years old.
5 percent are older than 65.
26 percent of the population live below the poverty line.
98 percent of the population are Bengali.
90 percent of the population practices Islam
Literacy rate around 58 percent.
That being said, Bangladesh has been striving for improvements and has been working towards it with increases in school enrolment, water sources and decreases in poverty. Part of what we are going to do in our work with smallholder farmers is to look at ways to improve their crop yield and market access to increase their income.
Monday, 29 September 2014
Sunday, 28 September 2014
Here I go!
In many ways this is new ground for me. First a blog, which bare with me, will be a work in progress. Secondly, being away from most comforts I am used to, and third, not being with Ashley during this adventure.
So, what am I doing? In October I will head to northern Bangladesh for a month to work on a project through my work. I will be living in a small village, most of my time with a host family and working with local potato farmers trying to find ways to help them improve productivity and access to markets with the goal to improve their income from their crops. We will be working with a volunteer service group has has been working in Bangladesh for the past 20 years for connections, translation and local support.
At this point, I arrive in the capital of Dhaka mid October for orientation and then fly north to to the Rangpur district. There we will divide our time between the local village and a larger town on the weekends. It sounds like I might have access to internet about 50 percent of the time so updates will be occasional.
I will be working alongside 14 other people from other offices around the world and getting to know them as well as fully experience life in Bangladesh. This blog will be about my experiences with life in Bangladesh and the everything that it holds.
I want to also say that while I am doing this, Ashley will be leaving at the same time for her pre-planned in field masters research in Nepal. We will be learning about separation and intermittent email communication, but also the great opportunity to immerse ourselves in a new culture for an extended period of time. If you want to follow her adventures, she can be found at ashleynepal.blogspot.com
So, what am I doing? In October I will head to northern Bangladesh for a month to work on a project through my work. I will be living in a small village, most of my time with a host family and working with local potato farmers trying to find ways to help them improve productivity and access to markets with the goal to improve their income from their crops. We will be working with a volunteer service group has has been working in Bangladesh for the past 20 years for connections, translation and local support.
At this point, I arrive in the capital of Dhaka mid October for orientation and then fly north to to the Rangpur district. There we will divide our time between the local village and a larger town on the weekends. It sounds like I might have access to internet about 50 percent of the time so updates will be occasional.
I will be working alongside 14 other people from other offices around the world and getting to know them as well as fully experience life in Bangladesh. This blog will be about my experiences with life in Bangladesh and the everything that it holds.
I want to also say that while I am doing this, Ashley will be leaving at the same time for her pre-planned in field masters research in Nepal. We will be learning about separation and intermittent email communication, but also the great opportunity to immerse ourselves in a new culture for an extended period of time. If you want to follow her adventures, she can be found at ashleynepal.blogspot.com
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