SPEAK UP

"I Can Not Be Defeated" - The Struggle for Hope in Rural Bangladesh

Here is the text of a letter, some personal details edited for privacy, from a girl we are sponsoring to stay in school in rural Bangladesh.  There are thousands more like her needing help - that's why we are building the Girls Education Program. 

Some of her language is profound but a bit flowery, a reflection of some of her education spent memorizing eloquent passages in English, some of which she doesn't fully understand.  But the gist of her message is crystal clear - she needs help to pursue her dream. 

Dear Sponsor,

I am 17 years old, and I read in Class 13.  My college name is Kumira Mohila College.  My subject is sociology.  I want to be a professor.  But my parents are very poor.  Their financial condition is not well enough.  My father is a farmer and mother is an illiterate woman.  She does all the house hold works with her own hands.  My father earn a little amount money.  But it is not enough for my family.  My father is a landless farmer who used to work on other people's land.  My parents are illiterate.  So they do not have any knowledge of science and health and nutrition and education.

A Recipe for Hope

Imagine this demographic situation:  Take 170 million people, more than half the population of the USA, and squeeze them into a space one-third the size of California.  Give them a per capita GDP of $1700 per year, 1/28th that of the USA.  Make the land prone to regular cyclones and floods, natural disasters that kill thousands and displace and destroy the livelihood of many more.  High population density, extreme poverty, natural disasters.  It's a recipe for disaster.

Now imagine that you are a young rural girl in that country, where the conservative religious and cultural climate makes it very difficult for you to break out of traditional expectations: early marriage, dropping out of school at age 13, complete submission to your husband even if you are abused, illiteracy.  Add in being a minority Hindu in a predominantly  Muslim country, and being a despised descendant of the Hindu untouchables where even your name sets you apart as lower caste, and the recipe for disaster becomes much worse. That's the situation facing the rural Dalit (untouchable Hindu) girls in Bangladesh: overcrowding, poverty, discrimination, early marriage, lack of education, and an epidemic of unreported abuse. 

Bangladesh - Behind the Numbers

When I was a kid growing up in Yemen, my Dad and I would challenge each other to name as many countries and capitals as we could, naming countries back and forth until we couldn't name any more.  I thought I was competing with my Dad, but he was probably just training my young mind to think globally.  For some reason I was always fascinated with Burma, a country that today is showing positive signs of change and freedom after a long, difficult history.  I'd get upset if my Dad named Burma before I did.  But a country that fascinated me in another way, and which I never visited until December 2010, was Bangladesh.  As a kid, all I knew of Bangladesh was that it was one of the poorest countries per-capita in the world; was the most crowded large-population country in the world; was predominantly Muslim, which limited opportunities for poor women in particular; and that the country regularly experienced terrible cyclones and flooding.  I thought it must be the neediest place on earth.

The Untouchables

I spent the day yesterday with my friends from Dhruba, a Bangladeshi NGO based in Khulna which serves the needs of the Dalit community in southwestern Bangladesh. This area is home to at least 50 Dalit villages, communities of 200-400 people each, extremely poor farmers and laborers. Mostly Hindu. We must have spent 8 hours on the motorcycle yesterday, going from village to village meeting with entire Dalit communities who had gathered for the occasion in the flimsy bamboo structures that serve as local schools. It was an incredible day, filled with stories of both abuse and discrimination and the ever-present, hopeful smiles of young kids, the future of their communities. They have an uphill battle, because in Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world, the Dalits are at the very bottom of the socio-economic ladder, kept there by a combination of discrimination, poverty and injustice.

It’s often hard for people in well-developed countries to relate to the mindset created by the past caste system, but