Bangladesh diary
MRDF's partner, CSKS, works with children who are living on the streets of Dhaka offering them food, a safe place to sleep and education
MRDF in Bangladesh
Get a sneak peek into the diary of Mandie Jones, one of MRDF's programme managers. She's currently in Bangladesh working alongside an MRDF partner, CSKS, which works with children living on the streets of Dhaka.
Today Andrew (another MRDF programme manager) and I made our way to the head office of CSKS, MRDF's partner here in Dhaka, which is implementing a highly-regarded project with street children. After a warm welcome from the staff, it was a privilege to sit with the organisation's lawyers, Sharmina and Farahana and find out about what they do.
Dhaka's street children are often arrested for petty crimes and more often than not ‘vagrancy' – a law founded in colonial times to protect the gentry from witnessing labourers and lepers sitting in the streets. With no familial support or access to legal services, the children face long jail terms for doing nothing but trying to survive. CSKS provides hope to street children by working toward their release. The lawyers work together with government offices to establish which children qualify for bail and to petition the district courts for their release.
Following the release of a child, he or she may then be re-united with their family or go to stay at a CSKS shelter where they are offered basic provisions such as food and water, but also the opportunity to learn to read and write and even enrol in school.
The lawyers are an integral part of the project and provide a much needed service to incarcerated children. Though faced with the same stresses and tensions that confront most lawyers, they enjoy their work and feel happy when a child is released. Sharmina Akhter, who has been in this role for 8 and a half years, says ‘As a lawyer, I feel proud to help street children'.
It was inspiring to meet these two women who clearly care passionately about what they do. It was a good introduction to this amazing organisation and I am excitedabout seeingmore as my week here progresses.
Day Two- A station school
Today I went to two of the seven centres that are run by CSKS – Sadarghat and Kamalapur. The centres provide shelter and food to children who wish to stay on either a short or long term basis. When children first come to a centre, they are offered basic literacy classes and an opportunity to play with the other children in a safe environment. Once a child has been at a shelter for 3 months, they are known as long-term children and are offered more educational opportunities such as vocational training in tailoring and carpentry or enrolment into a government primary school.
It was great to see these activities in action and to meet children that have benefited from the work that CSKS is tirelessly undertaking. The children were very happy to see me, smiling and waving and were very polite and welcoming.
At Kamalapur, I also went to an open air school that is operating at the train station. Children stay in this area because they can earn a living by carrying luggage to and from the trains. I went with an outreach worker to tell children about the open air school and gather them together. This is very challenging work, since it is difficult to motivate the children to come. By the time I reached the base, however, about 20 children had gathered and were happily playing Karim, a board game that involves tiddlywink type counters that should be flicked into corner holes. After hopelessly failing in my attempt at this, and talking to the staff and children, I headed back to the Kamalapur centre to meet more children before going back to my guest house to rest my head.
And as I lie in bed, typing out this diary, the words of one of the young boys, Bablu, come to my mind. When I asked him what the biggest change in his life was in coming from the street to the CSKS centre, he told me ‘peaceful sleep.'
Goodnight!!
Day Three- Making movies
I am taking a few moments out of our planning for tomorrow to tell you about the uplifting day we had today.
Over the last few days we have been observing a film crew at work. Sainsbury's is sponsoring a Sports Relief event in March – and has sent a team to produce an advert for them about the work that MRDF and CSKS are doing. Sport Relief is part of Comic Relief, which funds CSKS through MRDF. The crew assures us that the 30 people involved is a small team compared to a similar shoot in the UK, but to us, the gaffer, key grip, focus puller, 2 make up artists and others, seem a bewildering mass of roles (and who knows what the children must make of it all). Watch out for Jamie Oliver talking to you about street children in Bangladesh in March!
So the children have been busy in their starring roles, and the staff have been hard at work trying to organise them all. Yesterday was the last day of filming and today we were able to start working directly with the CSKS staff. MRDF aims to train the staff in the small organisations it works with, to assist them in gaining the skills that are necessary to run projects effectively. During our visits we run workshops on topics that are identified by the organisation to be areas where they would like to improve.
Today we focused on the ways that CSKS presents the work it does. The staff are brilliant with children, and we have heard so many success stories whilst we have been here, but the organisation is not strong at shouting about their achievements. So we discussed ways in which CSKS can present the work they do really positively. One example is the case studies of project ‘alumni'. CSKS was founded in 1987, so there are many children who have grown up through the CSKS project and have gone on to achieve gainful employment and have families of their own. CSKS staff know these stories and we often run into young adults who attribute their success to this project, but the organisation doesn't write about it. Today, we identified how sharing these stories will help CSKS to raise funds to continue their work. It was extremely rewarding to see people's faces light up as they started to develop new ways of working. A lot of laughs were had, and the energy was kept up with biscuits breaks!
This evening, the film crew threw a party to celebrate the fantastic footage they have captured. The prawn curry - that our guest house is famous for - was enjoyed by all, as we appreciated the opportunity to relax and enjoy the company of the project staff away from the work.
And now back to work to plan the day tomorrow, where 20 staff will be present for further training in how you monitor a child protection policy. I look forward to checking in again to share my experiences.
Day Four- Personalised care
Today was great. We held training sessions for about 20 staff members. This included the senior management team that we worked with yesterday, and individuals who work more closely with the children at the shelters and open-air schools.
After a good energetic exercise that saw Kirsty (MRDF's Director) encouraging the group to shake their arms and legs, Andrew led a session about changes and development in the lives of children. CSKS want to use an individualised care plan system to help them to plan for and track the progress of each child that they work with, but identified that they needed support on how to implement this. Andrew used the idea of a timeline of a child's experience at CSKS, and asked the staff to comment on the changes that they see in children during their time in the shelters. Andrew then demonstrated to staff that the changes that they expect to see, drawn from their years of experience working in this field, can form the basis of the care plans. The staff developed questions that they could ask at different stages of the child's stay, and discussed ways to respond to the child so that the care they offer is more personalised to their needs.
The afternoon session was led by Kirsty, and focused on child protection. Obviously it is very important that organisations working with children have a policy regarding child protection, which includes a code of conduct of appropriate behaviour and an action list of things to do if a problem arises. CSKS have a child protection policy already, so today's session focused on how it can be used throughout the organisation. This ranged from ways to ensure that the code of conduct and action list was accessible to children, through painting it with pictures on the walls, to ensuring that the recruitment procedure is mindful of child protection through checking criminal records and obtaining references.
The staff were enthusiastic throughout the day and clearly enjoyed discussing topics that affect their work so heavily. Meeting the team at CSKS has really inspired me; they are so dedicated and care so deeply for the children that they work with.
Tomorrow a small team of us will be visiting other organisations working with street children in Dhaka to share ideas about best practice and discuss opportunities for working together to tackle the over-riding issues concerning street children.
So for now, to bed, so that we're bright eyed for another full day tomorrow.
