The other day we wandered around the market near our hostel and gathered a large crowd as we made some small purchases. Gradually the adults lost interest but one of the children must have gone to find her friends to come and look at us and we ended up being followed by a large gaggle of children. They were quite shy but did respond to a salaam alaikum. They were quite excited by our cameras and posed for photos. (We did ask permission unlike one teenage Bangladeshi lad who later kept shoving a cameraphone in our faces!)
The area is very poor and people sleep thirty to a house here so we didn't mind the fact that we probably massively overpaid for everything we bought. I heard one man boast that he'd made 100 taka (about 83p) for a pair of flip flops.
It did make me feel quite daunted by the prospect of designing and implementing our own community action projects. After all, what do I know about this stuff? As a group of British and Bangladeshi volunteers we should generate plenty of ideas but the responsibility of ensuring that the projects make a difference and are sustainable also lies with us. Then again, that is the point of the whole programme - to empower young people (for VSO that's age 18-25) to take positive action for change in their communities.
We were reminded of the power of small things making big differences when we visited two projects working with street children. Many street children are 'owned' by so-called godfathers (think Slumdog Millionaire) and they are sent on to the streets to sell things at a profit. If something costs 10 taka (8 pence) maybe 1 or 2 taka stays with the child and 8 goes to the godfather. These children work long hours with little hope of breaking out of this cycle of poverty.
One project currently being run by VSO is a two hour play in the park. One hour is spent on informal education and the other is dedicated to play. When we visite it looked like they were playing pictionary. It might not seem like much but a two hour break in which to simply be children and receive some education could make a massive difference in the long run. The project doesn't cost much to organise either since it's run by volunteers.
Another project we visited was the Jaago Foundation www.jaago.com.bd/ It started as a small project to teach slum children English to create a more educated workforce which could attract foreign investment to Bangladesh. The school has now grown to include several branches in Dhaka and in different regions of Bangladesh. They're now working on an online school as well, although internet access and bandwidth are obviously causing some setbacks.
Many of the children who attend the school come from single parent homes and their mothers struggle to find work as they are unskilled. Jaago set up a sewing centre to teach them these skills and now the clothes they make are sold in Australia with profits going back into the running of the Foundation. They've also set up a candle factory and hold regular jumble sales of donated clothes. Every year on Univeral Children's Day they hold a massive fundraiser and last year raised 2.4 million taka. To do this, they needed the godfathers' permission to take the children off the streets for a day. The children are given the day off and are taken for a day out somewhere whilst adults take their places on the streets giving out flowers and collecting donations.
It was really inspiring to see how much this social enterprise has achieved and grown in such a short space of time and how young the man was when he started it in 2007 aged 21. Gave us all hope that we could really achieve something however small. And if anyone reading this is around UCL in the next few months look out for some bright yellow T-shirts!
The area is very poor and people sleep thirty to a house here so we didn't mind the fact that we probably massively overpaid for everything we bought. I heard one man boast that he'd made 100 taka (about 83p) for a pair of flip flops.
It did make me feel quite daunted by the prospect of designing and implementing our own community action projects. After all, what do I know about this stuff? As a group of British and Bangladeshi volunteers we should generate plenty of ideas but the responsibility of ensuring that the projects make a difference and are sustainable also lies with us. Then again, that is the point of the whole programme - to empower young people (for VSO that's age 18-25) to take positive action for change in their communities.
We were reminded of the power of small things making big differences when we visited two projects working with street children. Many street children are 'owned' by so-called godfathers (think Slumdog Millionaire) and they are sent on to the streets to sell things at a profit. If something costs 10 taka (8 pence) maybe 1 or 2 taka stays with the child and 8 goes to the godfather. These children work long hours with little hope of breaking out of this cycle of poverty.
One project currently being run by VSO is a two hour play in the park. One hour is spent on informal education and the other is dedicated to play. When we visite it looked like they were playing pictionary. It might not seem like much but a two hour break in which to simply be children and receive some education could make a massive difference in the long run. The project doesn't cost much to organise either since it's run by volunteers.
Another project we visited was the Jaago Foundation www.jaago.com.bd/ It started as a small project to teach slum children English to create a more educated workforce which could attract foreign investment to Bangladesh. The school has now grown to include several branches in Dhaka and in different regions of Bangladesh. They're now working on an online school as well, although internet access and bandwidth are obviously causing some setbacks.
Many of the children who attend the school come from single parent homes and their mothers struggle to find work as they are unskilled. Jaago set up a sewing centre to teach them these skills and now the clothes they make are sold in Australia with profits going back into the running of the Foundation. They've also set up a candle factory and hold regular jumble sales of donated clothes. Every year on Univeral Children's Day they hold a massive fundraiser and last year raised 2.4 million taka. To do this, they needed the godfathers' permission to take the children off the streets for a day. The children are given the day off and are taken for a day out somewhere whilst adults take their places on the streets giving out flowers and collecting donations.
It was really inspiring to see how much this social enterprise has achieved and grown in such a short space of time and how young the man was when he started it in 2007 aged 21. Gave us all hope that we could really achieve something however small. And if anyone reading this is around UCL in the next few months look out for some bright yellow T-shirts!
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