Even to people living in Bangladesh, explaining the concept of char islands can be challenging. These river islands in the world’s most riverine country are born as silt from the Himalayas settles and accumulates on the riverbeds, sometimes forming islands that are just a few metres wide, others that are up to twenty kilometres in width.
These islands are, for the most part, the most undeveloped places in Bangladesh. Generally, there is little to electricity, medical care, hospitals, police, and no predictability. In fact, perhaps the defining theme of life on chars islands is unpredictability.
While working with the DFID-funded Chars Livelihood Programme last year, we learned about this unpredictability. A home may last thirty years, or for just a few months of a dry season, and it might be washed away in sudden rises of the river within an hour’s notice.
We heard of families once surrounded by land on all sides for 300 metres, and within one hour, were on a boat watching their homes washed away by powerful rising waters.
In a country of 150+ million people, roughly 5-6 million live on these islands, and they generally constitute the country’s most under-privileged citizens.
We have taken a deep interest in the chars, so we were thrilled to support the first National Char Convention in early June. Roughly 80 organisations and 1,000 people attended, discussing how government and civil society can support citizens living on char islands in aspects from food security to education to helping them enter the workforce.
We worked with the event committee to design the event’s visual identity, from logo conception to street signage to publication layouts. For us, it was great to receive strong feedback on our designs, and to be able to support a concept that has deep significance to us.
We are currently planning a char island documentary and are enthusiastically applying learnings from the Convention experience to the film’s preparations. Thanks to the Convention committee for allowing us to be part of that process.