BGS started its journey implementing a massive emergency relief and rehabilitation program during the severely affected communities of the coastal areas of Cox’s Bazar district after the devastating cyclone where hit the areas on 29 April 1991 and has been fully involved in the process of disaster management and awareness from the very beginning. It constructed four cyclone shelter centers at Dhalghata and Matarbari unions at the initial stage. And also distributed emergency food stuff, drinking water, candle, baby-foods and ORS among more than 50,000 affected families in Upazilas of Ukhia, Teknaf, Moheshkhali, Kutubdia, Ramu and Cox’s Bazar Sadar.
BGS trained hundreds of volunteers in the coastal areas of Cox’s Bazar. It organized a national consultation workshop in 2012 with the assistance of UNESCO Dhaka office, while it has implemented a project on “Conduction and Development of Comprehensive Disaster Management Plan for Cox’s Bazar District, Ukhia Upazila and Kutubdia Upazila” with the financial support of Comprehensive Disaster Management Programme (CDMP – II) supported by UNDP, and the Ministry of Relief and Disaster, Government of Bangladesh.
From March 2022 to July 2023 BGS implemented a project “The Project for Capacity Enhancement on Formulation and Implementation of Local Disaster Risk Reduction Plan (LDRRP)” at Chakara and Cox’s Bazar Sadar Upazila under Cox’s Bazar district, which was collaboration with The Department of Disaster Management (DDM) of People’s Republic of Bangladesh and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). For implementing the above project BGS made a contract agreement with the Oriental Consultants Global Co., Ltd., 20-2 Nishishinjuku 3-chome, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, 163-1409, Japan.
The project consists the 4 Outputs as below: Output-1: The system and methods of hazards and risk assessment for Upazila Disaster Risk Reduction Plan (UzDRRP) are developed, Output-2: The institutional arrangement is developed in DDM to support the formulation of UzDRRP, Output-3: Practical UzDRRP is developed at pilot areas in collaboration with relevant ministries and local governments and Output-4: The mechanism is developed to expand the formulation of UzDRRPs nationwide.
Mainly BGS worked the first output at Chakaria and Cox’s Bazar Upazila.
In each year BGS is continuing food parcel (rice, lentils, oil, salt, onion, potato etc.), Hot meal (cooked food packet) and winter cloths distributions among the 3,000 to 3,500 poor families at BGS working area which is funded by LIFE, France since 2019.
BGS is committed to respond to different emergency and humanitarian needs of communities. It has responded and contributed through implementing projects to support the humanitarian crises of Rohingya refugees since 2015. It has successfully implemented several projects on health, nutrition, and WASH and food security, with the partnership of International Organization of Migration (IOM), JICA, World Vision International, BRAC, ECHO-USA and LIFE-France.
