Overview:
Situated along the floodplains of the Jamuna River basin, GKS prioritizes environmental sustainability, disaster risk reduction (DRR), and community-led climate change adaptation. Recognizing that environmental hazards immediately devastate lives, homesteads, and agricultural infrastructure, GKS equips grassroots communities with the knowledge, physical infrastructure, and warning networks needed to endure and quickly recover from ecological shocks.
Core Objectives:
- Build inclusive, community-managed disaster preparedness and climate adaptation capacity across flood-prone upazilas.
- Protect vital rural transport, school access, and agricultural supply chains through disaster-resilient physical infrastructure.
- Safeguard rural water and sanitation systems from seasonal contamination, waterborne epidemics, and flood submersions.
- Empower community institutions, particularly women and youth, to spearhead emergency warning, evacuation, and local mitigation planning.
Key Interventions & Field Activities:
- Inclusive Community DRR (DIPECHO & WLDM Projects): Conducting Participatory Capacity and Vulnerability Assessments (PCVA) to formulate community-owned Risk Reduction Action Plans (RRAPs) across vulnerable char unions.
- Resilient Infrastructure & Cluster Settlements: Raising earthen connecting roads and embankments to keep high-risk villages connected to markets, elevating primary school grounds to serve as community flood shelters (killas), and building raised cluster homesteads for river-erosion displaced families.
- Community Flood Early Warning: Installing color-coded flood level gauge pillars along riverbanks and equipping trained community volunteers with megaphones and first-aid kits to broadcast evacuation alerts well ahead of inundations.
- Water, Sanitation & Ecological Protection (WASH): Installing elevated, flood-proof tubewells and hygienic latrines, promoting low-cost tippy-tap hygiene stations, and executing roadside/embankment tree plantation drives to prevent topsoil erosion.