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!

The road (and village) that Motiar built

A long day of travelling not very far.  Where as yesterday's long journey took me half way across the country (literally), today's similar amount of travel time took me a little way out of the city and back.  Of course when I say a little way out of the city, that is really as the crow flies, and not factoring in the almost constant traffic jams.  We left at 6am to try and beat them, and didn't do too badly, we got there in around 3 hours, much better than the 5 it took to come back.

Today's trip was to the visit of Bandhabari, a leprosy village outside Dhaka.  The story of the village starts in the late '70s/early '80s with a group of leprosy patients from Dhaka who met in hospital at DBLM.  Although the stigma was even more severe then than it is today, and they know that coming back to Dhaka would not mean being reunited with their families, they decided to come back and stay together, and make a living begging.  At that time there really weren't any other options for people affected by leprosy, especially with some of the disabilites some of these patients already had.  So they moved back to Dhaka, and lived by begging, sleeping rough usually on station platforms, but people kept making them pay 'rent' for sleeping there, and one of the community, a very determined man called Motiar, decided that enough was enough. He went to see the leader of the Opposition to ask for some land to build their own village.  Some years later the Opposition became the government, and land was granted to the community.  Although it being for people affected by leprosy, it was far, far away from the city, in the middle of a forestry planation.  The army built them houses, a community hall and a couple of barns, and dug a well and put in a water pump, and they moved in.  They quickly realised that one important thing was missing - a road to connect their village to the 'main' road, a real problem for a community where many had serious disabilities.  Motiar got on the case, and in 2002 the road was built.  He is currently the chairman of the village, and continues his work trying to improve the lives of the inhabitants.   He is also a nominee for a Wellesley Bailey award, which marks significant contributions to improving the lives of people affected by leprosy.  No-one from Bangladesh has ever won before, so TLM Bangladesh is really hoping that he will.

The village is supported by The Leprosy Mission Bangladesh through their Dhaka Programme, with a number of children supported to attend school by either Dhaka Community Based Rehabilitation Project (CBRP), which is funded by the Scottish Government, or by an associated education project supported by donors from the Netherlands.  All the students were chosen to receive support by the community themselves.  The students academic marks are displayed for all to see in the community hall, and several of them are doing very well indeed - in fact the Scottish supported students are doing better!  To be fair that is probably because they have been in school longer, as the academic year had already started when the funding came in from the Netherlands.  But their parents are so happy and proud that they are studying, and will have many more opportunities than they did.  There is also some sewing training which started recently, and one man has been given support to start a cloth trading business, which is going well.  Sadly the first time he started the business, he broke his arm in an accident and has had to take out a further loan, but the project staff are confident he will pay it back well in time.  Afterwards, we had a wee tour of the village, and met some of the inhabitants, including Munnah, who, in spite of serious leprosy related complications over the years which have led to deformities in both of his feet and the amputation of his right hand due to an ulcer, remains a very positive man, with a great sense of humour, and has real hope for the future.

We then spent several hours working with the community on a funding application we are submitting to the UK Department for International Development.  We have had our concept note accepted, so are writing up the full application for an expansion to Dhaka CBRP to increase the support for livelihood development.  In project planning, it is vital that the community be the basis of any project, as without their ownership it will fail, so we were keen to get their input on what kinds of income generating activities they would be interested in learning and think could work in their unique context.  They are severely hampered by their distant location, but creative thinking is both essential and commonplace in communities like these, so we have come away with some very interesting ideas.  The children were quickly bored in such a long meeting, and had great fun playing outside with their parents' and grandparents' wheelchairs while the grown ups talked.