The Uncultured Project

The Dharmarajika Orphanage is home to approximately 500 students – mostly poor children from the Chittagong Hill-Tracts. It is run by the Buddhist community here in Dhaka but it is not home to only Buddhists. All the residents here are too poor to go to afford to school. The Dharmarajika Monastery helps by providing free schooling, food, and room & board for these students and orphans.

Although it’s a life far better than living in the slums, it’s far from luxurious. Lack of running water force residents to use a local green-colored pond instead. Wooden boards and old tables serve as “beds” for these students. The frequent power outages make it near impossible to study. Many use the outages as an opportunity to rest or spend time with friends. Few students, like the one pictured above, struggle to keep studying by candlelight.

Expect to see more about Dharmarajika in the future. In the meantime, there is a album with a lot more photos on Flickr. Not seen in the photo is another student (to the right) – too dim to be seen studying in this candlelight.

Image via AFP

Although not anywhere near as bad as Cyclone Sidr which hit Bangladesh in 2007, Cyclone Alia has already killed 100 over 200 people with many more displaced and without access to shelter or clean & safe drinking water. I want to help – but I might as well be back in my bed in Canada because that goal is so very far away.

I need a hero.

Nick Downie (2007)

I was able to help during Cyclone Sidr because of someone who is now a personal hero of mine. His name is Nick Downie. Back during Cyclone Sidr, he was working for Save the Children UK. In the midst of all this death and trauma, Nick saw the sincerity in my desire to help… and gave me the opportunity.

Helping Kids with Save the Children

Thanks to him approximately 35 children at a Save the Children Safe Center were provided with blankets to sleep under in advance of the winter season that was quickly approaching. Without any homes or shelter, those blankets were the only way many of those children & families were able to stay warm that winter. I’m willing to help again and have even more to offer this time.

One LifeStraw = Clean Water For A Year

Thanks to Vestergaard-Frandsen I have 45 personal water purification units. These can turn water from any salt-free source (a pond, a river, a lake) and turn it into safe drinking water. I have 10 insecticide treated tarpaulins – useful as shelter and to keep disease spread by bugs away. I also have donations from over 22 different countries ready to be spent. But I have no means to help anyone just by myself.

I need a hero again.

Thus far, my friends at Save the Children are working up the various chains of command trying to see if I can team up again. No word yet – but I am hopeful. A friend at the American International School helped me network with the Deputy Country Director of Care Bangladesh. The Deputy Country Director thanked me for the offer – and then politely denied my request.

I am ready willing, and able to go to the field right away. I know it’s not going to be a glamorous experience. Last time I went, the “toilet” was nothing more than a hole in the ground and my “bed” was nothing more than two abandoned school desks put together. I don’t ask for much except the opportunity to get out there, help, and share the story with those interested in following along.

It’s disasters like Cyclone Alia that highlight a painful reality for me here in Bangladesh. Charities are more than happy for people like me to raise awareness & funds for them back home. But doing the same with them on the ground is a completely different reality – and the majority of charities haven’t given me the time of day to even consider the possibility.

Now more than ever, I need someone to help me so I can help others.

Country Director for Save the Children USA in Bangladesh

“This is development work,” he said to me as I sat across from him. I was in the offices of Save the Children USA with Kelly Stevenson – the country director. I had lost count of how many meetings I’ve had with him – though I was grateful for every single one.

My view of development work and fighting poverty has certainly changed a lot since I first started this project. For one thing, I had come into this project with an overly consumerist attitude to fighting poverty.

Having started by using my money saved for an Xbox 360 to help the poor, I foolishly assumed that helping the poor would be as easy as buying an Xbox 360. That is, I thought if you had the money, you should just be able to do it.

But it’s never that easy. And, if anyone tells you it is, they’re lying.

The first thing I learned is that non-profit organizations don’t run like for-profit organizations. “Duh!” some of you are no doubt saying right now. I always assumed that non-profits would be as eager to take my money to help the poor the same way Best Buy would be eager to take my money and give me an Xbox 360.

But it’s never that easy.

Staff in Barisal - Working on My Project Means Other (Bigger Funded) Projects Go Temporarily on the Backburner

One thing I learned with Save the Children USA is that every level of their staff plays a fine balancing act. They work in a world where the need is so great and the resources are so very finite. Every time they give their attention to one project (or one person), it comes at the cost of ignoring something else.

In such a reality, you can’t help but feel a bit guilty. Every meeting I have with Save the Children was coming at the cost of something else. I also realized that – if they were purely utilitarian or doing it by the numbers – they’d never give me the time of day. I mean, when you have multi-million dollar grants to deal with, who would have time for a kid with a couple of grand?

Then there are emergencies.

Meeting to Discuss "Challenge Poverty" Projects

Emergencies in Bangladesh are like a giant reset button. No matter what progress you make or what you have scheduled – it can all go down the drain when an emergency comes. Whether it’s violence that delays a trip or a cyclone (like yesterday’s Cyclone Alia) – when an emergency comes, everything stops. No matter how important.

Over 100 days ago, I flew to Bangladesh in order to complete Challenge Poverty. The goal was to complete a Pond Sand Filter for a rural village & to help repair a school damaged by Cyclone Sidr. Although I know Save the Children is doing their best, there are a lot of hurdles and a lot of things to take care of before any of this is complete. I still don’t know when it will all be done.

It’s never as easy as it looks.

I haven’t updated this blog as often as I used to – but that doesn’t mean you can’t get regular updates from me. Thanks to an iPhone donated by some friends, I’m on Twitter almost all the time. I upload photos in real-time on Radar.net and I’ve also started mobile video blogging. The internet isn’t that great in Bangladesh – it takes about 30 minutes to upload a 30 second clip using the cell network here. But it’s better than nothing

You can check out all my mobile vlogs on my second channel http://youtube.com/thestudent. Below is one of my vlogs where I try and talk while fighter jets are flying overhead

Exactly one month ago to the day, a medical doctor working for Save the Children was brutally murdered by the Taliban in Pakistan. He was in a car with his sister & nephew. They stopped at a security checkpoint and were taken by surprise by a suicide bomber. Incidentally, both the perpetrators & victims of this terrorist attack were Muslim.

I tell this story for two reasons. First, fanatical extremists like the Taliban are a threat to everyone – Muslim & non-Muslim alike. Secondly, this sacrifice is one of the many countless reasons I want to support organizations like Save the Children. Few civilians have shed more blood, sweat, and tears than those working for Save the Children.

What strikes me about Save the Children is that they often shy away from putting the spotlight on their own personnel. This is in contrast with many newer charities, where the cause and founder are often one and the same and the PR brings attention to both. Despite my close relationship with Save the Children USA – I actually don’t know who founded it or who its current president is.

Instead of putting the spotlight on their employees & founders, Save the Children likes to put the spotlight on those who support their work. And, most recently, that’s what they did by putting the spotlight on me. It’s quite an honor to go to the website of one of the world’s most honored, respected, and storied charities and find your face on their homepage.

But, instead of telling you what this exposure means to me, I thought I’d share the many names of the many people I know that make Save the Children the great organization that it is: Nick Downie, Kelly Stevenson, Cindy LaBlanc, Ettore Rossetti, Erica Khetran, Lynne Lebarron, Hannah Kinnersley, Muhammad Zia, Josephine Koppel, and – most of all – one of Save the Children’s own that had recently paid the ultimate cost in serving others: Dr. Mohammed Ullah.

Few people (especially outside the armed services) knowingly choose to work in places where there is risk of death from natural disasters, disease, and violence. Few people see a hurricane, epidemic, or explosion and decide to rush towards the problem. And even fewer people decide to do all this in relative personal obscurity.

It’s for that reason that – even though this blog post sounds like I’m really really really sucking up – I’m not. Because they deserve all this praise and every ounce of support we can give.

Here are some of my videos featuring or mentioning Save the Children. I’m proud that I’ve been able to increase the exposure of Save the Children online. My YouTube videos mentioning them have been seen nearly twice as many times as every video on every official Save the Children YouTube channel – combined.