Reaching everyone with safe water and improved sanitation means reaching EVERYONE – no matter what their age, gender or specific needs are. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) specify that we must put the people who are hardest to reach first and that we must leave no one behind. The story is about one Asiya Khatun, a transgender woman, whom we did not leave behind in our effort to ensure safe water and improved sanitation for all.
Asiya (40) is a resident of Shonnashgacha village under Gourighona Union Parishad, Keshabur, Jashore. Since her childhood, she became a victim of bullying, discrimination, and harassment due to her sex difference. But Asiya did not let these to become obstacles in her way of life. Fighting all odds, she continued her education and passed HSC from a local college. Sadly, she could not win over poverty and had to leave her study there. Because of her utmost determination, continued hard work and modest behavior, she became a teacher of Gourighona Adarsha Madrasa.
However, Asiya is no different when it comes to dealing with the water crisis. Like others, she too was facing an acute crisis of safe water in her area. Every day she had to walk a few kilometers as well as tolerate humiliation from other people to get safe water. It became an unspoken rule that Asiya had to the last person to get fresh water from the tube well. Seeing no respite from the situation, ill-fated Asiya went to the Union Parishad one day to meet the chairman and requested him to set up a tube well close to her house. But, her efforts went in vain as the chairman could not do anything for her. Heart-broken Asiya returned to her home giving up the hope of getting a tube well around her place.
A couple of months later, Gourighona Union Parishad was enlisted among the UPs where HYSAWA is implementing a SDC-funded project to ensure safe water and improved sanitation access in hard-to-reach areas. Eventually, a Community Development Forum (CDF) was formed in the area in assistance with our Community Organizer (CO) and Asiya was nominated by the community people to become a volunteer of it. A few days later, the CDF members sat together to select a site for installing a new tube well in the area. The possibility of installing the tube well in Asiya’s house was discarded immediately as she was a transgender. The CO, then, convinced the CDF members by saying that Asiya should get priority as she is a neglected and disadvantaged person. Realizing this, the community members agreed and Asiya got a safe water source at her arm’s length.
“I had to face social humiliation just for a drink of fresh water. Now, the community people and also from other places come to my house to get fresh water. I feel so happy and honored. Thanks to HYSAWA for putting an end to my bad days” says a more confident and cheerful Asiya. Not only that, being a CDF volunteer, she is also working to motivate people on hygiene issues and teaching them how to lead a healthy life by following simple hygiene practices.
Case study collected by Communication & Documentation Officer, HYSAWA. November 2018.