Celebrations

Group discussion, Shilpi (in green and yellow) is project staff

Another busy day, though with a lot less travelling!  The morning was spent in the office, with some time attending a seminar on Gender Linkages and Rights, which is one of a programme of 15 sessions which looks at a whole variety of gender issues.  Most of those attending were women, but not all.  The majority of our Self Help Group members are women.  Mallica, the project manager, was determined that the older women there would be heard just the same as the younger ones, some of whom are still at high school or college, and so are used to doing presentations and such like.  Older women often have no voice in this culture, and she wanted to make sure that their opinions were heard too.  After the seminar, I spent several hours with colleagues working on issues around reporting and funding applications, funnily enough I have no fun photos from that session for you!

The afternoon was by far the best bit.  TLM provides educational support through Self Help Groups for several hundred children in Dhaka (see yesterday's blog).  These are children from poor families, often with one or more parent disabled, or who face stigma from having a family member affected by leprosy.  Without this support, they would not be in school.  Just yesterday one mother in Bandhabari thanked us in tears for allowing her son to stay in school.  In Scotland we take education so much for granted, here it is something incredibly valuable.  As well as the financial support, TLM provides peer mentoring for the children, and rewards academic excellence.  Of the hundreds of children, I met about 20, what might be called the cream of the crop, today, and presented them with their prizes for doing particularly well at school.

Music from Dipthi and her proud Dad

Three children had finished first in their class (including Dipthi in the photo on the right), three had finished second in their class, and there were students who have achieved an overall mark of A+, A or A-, and they were given new rucksacks, lunch boxes and juice bottles.  Some of their parents were looking proudly on, and it was a wonderful privilege to celebrate with them.  This educational opportunity and their own hard work will give these children and their families a very different future to the one they would otherwise have faced.  The photo below shows me with the final group of 4 students, who all achieved an overall mark of A-, along with TLM Bangladesh Dhaka Programme Manager Mr Jiptha Boiragee and Dhaka Community Based Rehabilitation Project Manager Mrs Mallica Halder.  As ever, trying to get everyone to look in the same direction at once is a challenge!