Community Seed Wealth Center and Gumat are disaster shelters
Mehinoor Khatun ( 33) is living in the village of Bantiar,Shahjadpur, Sirajgonj. She has two sons and a daughter. Her husband Sontesh Miah is a tuberculosis patient and can not do any work. They have 87 decimal of cultivable land. They also have one cow, two goats, six ducks and six hens.
She moved with two sons (9 and 6 year s) and a daughter (1) along with 3 species of seeds, one cow, two goats, six ducks and six chickens in Seeds center and Gumat (Cow shelter) during flood in 2007. This Seed wealth center and Gumat were established by UBINIG for sheltering flood affected people and livestock.
Mehinoor Begum said that the Seed wealth center and Gumat were of great help for them during flood. After recession of flood water they planted seeds that they had kept in the Seed center of UBINIG.
She said, “If we would not get the provision for keeping seeds in this Seed center it would not be possible to kept seeds in my own hand.
In that case we would be compelled to purchase seeds from the market that would cost very high.
So the seed center was directly helpful to save cash money for my family and also helpful to producing crops in the ecological way. This seeds center was also useful to keep our own local and qualitative seeds in our own way.
The cow, goats, duck and chickens that we kept in the gumat were very helpful for my family”.
If the Gumat facility would not be available in these areas we would be bound to sell our cow, goat, duck and hens.
They expressed their application for the facilities for helping at the time of disaster and supporting them economically, ecologically by reducing risk and vulnerability and also enhancement to build their capacity for facing natural disaster”.