COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
PROJECT IN SUNDARBANS
PARTNER: BUSY BEE, A SOCIAL ENTERPRISE OF BANGLADESH
The Earth is directly working for the sustainability of Sundarbans, the biggest mangrove forest of the world and one of the UNESCO heritage sites. It is directly working with the indiginous honey hunters community locally called Mawalies who are living in the forest fringe villages in Sunderbans.
The Purpose of this project is to promote a long term & sustainable conservation solution in the Sundarbans, protecting beehives in a natural way, ensuring a better livelihood of Mawalis through fair trading. While Busy Bee is busy to create economic opportunities through fair trading with the Mawali communities, in the meanwhile The Earth is taking care of their alternative livelihood training specially for women, awareness building for sustainable collection of wild honey and conducting research and development on protect the bees of sundarbans and to increase the production of honey without harming the bees. And the fund of those activities come from the 10% of the Busy Bee’s revenue stream which is reinvested for the community development purpose. And that is how The Earth and Busy Bee prioritize their focus to serve people, planet and profit.
IMPACT
- 13 Mawalies have received training on sustainable honey collection.
- 1 focus group discussion on women empowerment.
- 1 research piloting on rafter beekeeping- an alternative wild bee keeping in sundarbans.
- 1 family has received candle making training
FUTURE PLAN
- A big research on the Rafter Beekeeping in the Sundarbans area.
- Creating resilient communities specially living in the forest fringe village by raising awareness on the importance of co-existence.
- Conduct enough alternative skill development training to reduce the dependency in the forest.
- More research on the rich biodiversity of Sundarbans and increasing its contribution to carbon emission reduction, climate change and natural disaster resilience.