Rich text
The human story
On the coast, in the small town of Patharghata, that same partnership backed Shiuli Begum — a mother of two who, three years ago, had never run a business. For most of her life, she'd made impossible choices just to keep her family healthy. "We used to drink water from the pond," she says. "It wasn't salty like the river, but it was never clean." Rainwater never lasted the season, and the cost showed up in illness and medicine bills for her family and their community of around 1,000 people.
Everything changed when she met Shamsul, a local BRAC project officer, who told her people in other sub-districts had set up their own water treatment plants with support from the partnership. It was a big leap – hers would be the first plant of its kind in the sub-district – but her husband, a boat repairer with a habit of chasing new technology, encouraged her to take it. With a loan and technical advice, she did.
She gave the water away free at first. "We'd almost forgotten the taste of clean water," she says of her neighbours' reaction. Gradually, people started paying, and BRAC's own sub-district office became her first corporate client. This year, her plant tripled its capacity.