Before help arrives

When the Teesta rises, Jorifa checks on her own children. Then she wades out into the water to check on everyone else’s. Jorifa is 37. She lives in a village on the banks of the river Teesta in northwest Bangladesh, with her husband and three children. He earns a living from the river, catching and selling fish. She runs the household. Their house sits close to the water.

By the time it reaches her door, she’s already moving.

Jorifa walks waist deep through the village, working out who’s in trouble. Who has small children. Who has an elderly relative who can’t get themselves to higher ground. Whose house sits in the most exposed spot. This isn’t a role anyone gave her. It’s a role she took, because in the first hours of a flood, before any relief team can reach a village like hers, the only people who can help are those already there.

“… how can I sit quietly in my house when my neighbours are trapped in the water? Disaster does not come to only one house. The whole village has to face it together.”

— Jorifa

When relief teams do arrive, they’re often working with limited time and limited information. They can’t know, in a single visit, which household has run out of food, whose roof is about to collapse, who’s pregnant, who’s sick, who’s disabled. Jorifa knows. She’s the difference between aid that lands roughly in the right area and aid that reaches families that desperately need it.

It’s not the kind of leadership that gets a title. It’s knowing your neighbours well enough to spot who’s most at risk, and showing up for them before anyone else does.

“I know the situation of every family in the village. I try to make sure that help reaches the people who really need it.”

The Teesta isn’t a stable river to live beside. It’s shrinking for part of the year and flooding the rest of it – and increasingly that pattern is being decided far upstream. In 2023, a glacial lake in Sikkim, India burst its banks and destroyed the Teesta-III hydropower dam, sending a surge of water down the entire river system as far as Bangladesh. Char lands (the low sandbar settlements that form and disappear along the river, often home to the poorest families because the land is unstable and rarely comes with secure ownership) are hit hardest by surges like this. Homes and crops can be washed away within hours. India’s Gazoldoba Barrage (a dam which controls how much of the Teesta’s water reaches Bangladesh) adds another layer of unpredictability; it has drastically cut dry season flow since it came into operation, while its water releases in 2025 contributed to serious flooding across Nilphamari, Lalmonirhat and Rangpur in Bangladesh. A water sharing treaty between the two countries has been under discussion for decades, without resolution.

9.15 million people share the Teesta floodplain, on land that makes up 14% of Bangladesh’s total cultivated area. More and more people continue to settle here, despite the river becoming harder to predict.

Across northwest Bangladesh, 35% of households say housing is at most risk from erosion – even more than drinking water (23%) or healthcare (17%). And land lost to the river pushes people out of farming and into day labour, trading a stable living for a far less secure one.

This is the backdrop Jorifa works against, every rainy season. Not one flood, but a river system under long-term pressure, and a village with no guarantee that outside help will arrive before the water does. A family can’t be climate resilient on its own in a place like this. Good housing matters – a raised plinth, a strong structure, a home built to withstand what the river will do to it. Housing sits within a community, and communities survive because people like Jorifa hold them together.

“We may be poor, but we are not helpless. When we stand together, we can help each other survive even when the river becomes dangerous.”

What Jorifa does isn’t a one-off act of courage. It’s a pattern. Women in Bangladesh have historically died in disasters at much higher rates than men because warnings didn’t reach them, and shelters didn’t account for their safety or needs. Where women have been involved in designing those systems and shelters, this has lowered the ratio of female to male deaths by almost two-thirds. Harnessing women’s knowledge of their homes and neighbourhoods saves lives.

Women doing this work – reading the risk in their own village, passing on warnings, standing between their neighbours and disasters – rarely get named for it. They don’t ask to be. But if we’re serious about building housing and communities that can withstand an ever changing and volatile climate, this is where resilience starts.

This is why AzuKo designs with women like Jorifa.

DATA SOURCES

• Al Jazeera (2025), No land, no home, no future

• The Climate Watch (2026), Teesta river dries up, threatening northern livelihoods

• Mondal MSH, Islam MS (2027), Chronological trends in maximum and minimum water flows of the Teesta River, Bangladesh, and its implications

• Chowdhury, Md. A. et al. (2025), Internally displaced people induced by riverbank erosion: Challenges and adaptation in the northwestern part of Bangladesh

• Ikeda, K. (1995), Gender differences in human loss and vulnerability in natural disasters: A case study from Bangladesh

• UNDRR (2019), Women's leadership key to reducing disaster mortality

Keeping cool shouldn't be a privilege

We’re feeling the heat. The Met Office has issued a rare ‘red: extreme heat’ warning for the UK, as temperatures rise towards 38°C. And we're far from alone – France, Spain and Italy are under the same red alerts, with dangerous heat reaching corners of Europe not built for it.

Many of us can take the edge off. We run the cold tap and fill a glass. We switch on a fan, if the electricity bill isn't a worry. We step into a local library where the air is cooler.

But that comfort has never been shared equally. There may well be people on your own street who can't afford to keep their home cool, or an elderly neighbour facing the heat alone.

And the women and families we work with in rural Bangladesh face it with few options. There's often no piped water to the house. A fan, and the electricity to run it, can be out of reach. Nowhere nearby offers a cooler place to retreat to. The heat remains after long days in the fields and caring for family. Rest is rarely on the table.

And it's no longer a passing season. Bangladesh now ranks second in the world for exposure to extreme temperatures, and since 1980 the ‘feels like’ temperature has risen by 4.5°C. In the summer of 2025, close to 60 million people across Bangladesh endured life-threatening heat. The toll on health is real: cases of diarrhoea and respiratory diseases double, and women are among the most likely to suffer heat exhaustion and heat stroke.

“In extreme heat, poorly built homes feel like ovens. But women’s work never stops. It impacts their health, sleep and wellbeing. They have no choice but to endure it.”

— Apu (Nirapod Bangladesh Songstha)

This is where the home itself can help. Much of AzuKo’s work pairs traditional building methods with practical upgrades. Vernacular* architecture works with the climate – for example, thick earth walls act as thermal mass absorbing heat during the day to keep interiors cool. They then release that stored warmth slowly once the air cools at night. As nights themselves grow warmer, a home that starts the evening cooler matters all the more. But those same earthen walls are vulnerable. Heavy rain, humidity and flooding wear them down, and families lose precious time to constant repairs.

The fix doesn’t have to be costly. Simple additives and stabilisers (often materials that can be found in the village) coupled with good design principles, help earth walls become more water resilient and longer lasting. This means less maintenance, less money spent, and more time and energy to rise above poverty.

“A good house is cool and airy in summer, warm in winter and protected from storms. The whole family can live together safely and healthily. Only in such a house can a family live with dignity.”

— Runa (northwest Bangladesh)

The heat will come again next year, and the year after. The question is who gets to meet it from somewhere safe?

With your support, a woman in Bangladesh can build a home that holds the worst of it at bay – and gives her family the chance to look beyond simply surviving the summer.

Give today, and help build that home.

* Vernacular architecture is building rooted in a particular place and culture: made from local materials, shaped by techniques passed down over generations, and designed to work with the climate rather than against it. It's the practical knowledge of communities, not formally trained architects.

If you know someone who might be at risk, there are things you can do.

In the UK, your local council can offer advice if you're concerned about a friend, neighbour or family member who needs extra support. The Government's Beat the heat guidance and the NHS pages on heat exhaustion and heatstroke explain how to spot the warning signs and help someone stay safe.

In Bangladesh, the national Guideline on heat-related illness and UNICEF's technical note on protecting children from heat stress set out practical steps to recognise and respond to heat-related illness.

Wings to fly

Sumita lives in a small rural village in northwest Bangladesh. It’s an agricultural area, most of her neighbours are farmers and the housing conditions are poor. She married young, and has dedicated her life to her family and three children. Now she wants to open her wings and fly.

Sumita joined AzuKo’s Build for safety training to learn how to improve her home. She wasn’t sure what to expect, but soon found out it was much more than a construction course – it was a door to opportunities. After she completed the training, she set her sights on improving her kitchen. She’s a talented cook, and spends much of her day preparing meals for her family. Along with women in her village, she formed a savings group to help each other access finance for home improvements.

She saved enough money to contribute 6,000 BDT (£45), approximately 20% of the build cost for her new kitchen, and we worked with her to design and build it. The kitchen is raised above flood waters with a brick plinth, and the once earthen floor is now cement reducing the need for maintenance and repairs. New walls and roof protect against the intense sun and monsoon rains, with lockable doors so she can safely store utensils. The design encourages cross ventilation, meaning it now doesn’t fill with thick black smoke... and her favourite feature, a kitchen table. She no longer needs to prepare meals hunched over the floor. This is the power of good design.

“Before my kitchen had no walls and a mud floor. It was difficult to keep the rats away. Now we have this kitchen. It’s so clean. I can store food, prepare and cook easily.”

— Sumita

Sumita loves her country of Bangladesh. She used to dream about joining the civil service, but when she became a mother her life took a different path. Now she sees new possibilities for her family, and also for herself.

“When I was young, I was like a bird. I was free. I want to fly. I think I can, I have hope again.”