Stories of change
Three hundred tokens
“I have queued for relief before and gone home with nothing. Here they gave me a number the week before, so I knew.”
Relief distributions in Bangladesh have a reputation, and it is not always a good one. Crowds arrive, supplies run out, and the people who most needed help are the least able to push to the front.
We use a token system for exactly this reason. Recipients are identified in the days beforehand with the help of local people who know the area, and each is given a numbered slip. On the day, they queue with the token in hand and collect the package assigned to them.
Abdul Karim has been through both kinds of distribution. The difference, he says, is knowing in advance that he would not be going home empty-handed.
