Shafiqul Alam Oxfam has for many years worked across the Ganges-Brahmaputra river basin, with partners, to reduce vulnerability to floods, to prepare communities for future flood disasters, and to respond when communities cannot cope with them. The poorest people live in areas most prone to flood and cyclone, and they are hard to reach. Being poor means unable to read, and therefore unable to access information.
Women suffer the worst, but are the hardest, for a number of reasons, to involve in preparedness.
Involving women in disaster preparedness is a tried and tested strategy. Women are engaged in house construction, in preventing the pollution of drinking water, in vaccinating animals, in cultivating flood-tolerant crops that grow quickly after a disaster in storing essential food supplies, and in maintaining tube wells. Women are often involved in making decisions about community-level emergency stores, and shelter management. Integrating gender into relief-distribution is an important part of the strategy. Targeting the poorest women-led households, including widows, homeless, and separated women, is an important first step.