Nazma's story from the Bangladesh emergency
Nazma, 12, lives with her parents, two sisters and brother in Patharghatha, a village near the Bangladeshi coast of the Bay of Bengal. She and her family rode out Cyclone Sidr in a shelter.
Thursday 22 November 2007
Emergency aid workers for Save the Children are now assisting many of the hundreds of thousands of families who survived the worst cyclone to hit the southern coast of Bangladesh in more than a decade. Save the Children staff member Kate Conradt reports on one child she met near the Bay of Bengal.
"Our house is totally destroyed," she told me. "Everything is broken."
Patharghatha lies within Borguna District, where Save the Children has distributed food rations to 26,700 households and provided household kits (including cooking pots, plates, matches, plastic sheeting and soap) to 900 families.
Nazma's father, a fisherman, is trying to put the home back together for his family. Salvaging usable materials from the wreckage (homes here are made of wood and corrugated metal), he has managed to put up a small room so that they do not have to sleep outside at night, as they did for several days after the storm hit on Thursday November 15.
Because Nazma's school was severely damaged by the storm, she is helping her father by gathering materials for the house. She - and the hundreds of other children in the village - are spending their newfound free time scrambling through shattered houses, downed trees and power lines, and wreckage from boats now strewn along the shore.
Save the Children is working to help officials in many communities set up supervised safe space areas for children so that youngsters like Nazma can avoid the many dangers that now surround them. We are also seeking ways to get children back into a school setting as quickly as possible.
Children in Bangladesh need urgent help after surviving the worst cyclone to hit the country in the past decade. Make an online donation to support Save the Children's work.
