Global Venture to Bangladesh

On July 6th four young Global Footsteps members will depart for Bangladesh on a twp week fact finding visit to the newly established community capacity building project, the HRA Foundation in Nowder village, Bishwanath, Sylhet. The visit is being led by Global Footsteps co-ordinator Morgan Phillips who will be accompanied by two young film makers, Josh Sanger and George Allen, who will document the trip and a trainee teacher, Alice Matthews. Alice has made links with the Gloucestershire based education initiative ‘Sharing Communities’ and will gather resources on their behalf.

As well as the HRA Foundation the four will visit several other NGO projects and several other key people involved in improving life for the ordinary citizens of Bangladesh. On returning to the UK they will report back to the Global Footsteps membership the wider community through a short documentary film and a series of presentations.

Global Footsteps has closely assisted Mr. Arosh Ali, founder of the HRA Foundation, in creating a new charitable trust The Friends of Nowder. Mr Ali has lived in the UK for over thirty years but felt moved to transform land and buildings left to him by his late father into a centre to serve his home community. The HRA Foundation is two years old and provides primary healthcare and education for all as well as vocational training for men and women. The Friends of Nowder is a grant making organisation and hopes that the HRA is the first of many similar projects it will support. The goal, in time, for the HRA is to be a self sustaining project funded primarily by an on location women’s textile cooperative and eco-tourism facility. It hopes to grow in line with Social Business principles.

Cheltenham MP, Martin Horwood, is a keen supporter of The Friends of Nowder and will become its patron. He had the following to say about the project and the forthcoming visit:

‘Having worked for Oxfam in the past, I know the immense value to poor communities of well thought out projects based on local knowledge. This project should improve health and education in this very poor part of Bangladesh and empower local people to earn more income and improve their situation. But it’s essential to make sure the project is well run and this trip by Global Footsteps is an important part of that plan. I wish them well.’

Jana visits Ramnicu Valcae for Global Footsteps! Part 4!

Fourth day, 17th March 2010

Irina and I went to see another project, which had been implemented in the community a short time ago. With the help of the Göttingen waste management, a system of waste separation had been installed and a new waste land was being built. As the other projects we saw, this too is EU-funded.

Back in Irina’s office, we did not stay for a long time but left for La Journée de la Francophonie, the French days in Valcea. Schools were presenting short plays by Molière and Romanian playwrites in the library and this was a nice opportunity to join some local cultural events without struggeling with the language barrier – at least almost, as the Romanian plays were in Romanian. We had lots of fun watching and couldn’t take our eyes off the smallest children running around in their traditional costumes.

Later, we went to the market place again to get some food for my journey from Valcea to Sibiu, which was due the next morning. In the evening, I went out alone and strolled through Valcea’s city centre, taking pictures and being happy with the experience!

Friends of Nowder

On Sunday 24^th January Global Footsteps members Arosh Ali, Mary Paterson and myself met at the Friends Meeting House in Cheltenham with a host of others involved in the formation of The Friends of Nowder charitable trust.

Arosh Ali has been a member of Global Footsteps for about a year now, he came to us to see how we could help him establish a UK based charity that would support the work of the HRA Foundation, a community capacity building project in Arosh’s home village of Nowder in rural Bangladesh. Since the day Arosh first walked into FootSteps we have been helping him conceptualise, organise and now formally establish the Friends of Nowder. Friends of Nowder will perform three roles. In the first instance, and most importantly, it will raise money to send as grants to the HRA Foundation to help it grow and flourish in three main areas: Education, Primary Health Care and Women’s Empowerment. Secondly, Friends of Nowder will raise awareness amongst the UK population of the issues surrounding development in Bangladesh and the wider developing world. Thirdly, it will advise start-up or emerging community projects that have similar aims and goals as the HRA Foundation. The HRA Foundation has been in operation for just over two years, thanks to the tireless work and enthusiasm of Arosh Ali, once it is well established Friends of Nowder will look for other projects to fund and support.

Sunday’s meeting was also attended by Jerry and Sue Barr from Bishop’s Cleeve who continue to provide invaluable advice and support to the project. Friends of Nowder are also tremendously fortunate to have Martin Horwood MP as a patron and he was on hand on Sunday to witness the official signatures of the first three trustees of Friends of Nowder: Mary Paterson, Tariq Rashid and myself.

Mary visited Nowder early last year and has since been very keen to help the HRA get off the ground. I will visit Nowder on a Global Venture later this year to assist in the production of promotional materials including a documentary on the work being done to cope with and eradicate poverty in Bangladesh. Tariq is also keen to visit Nowder in the near future and we hope to invite an employee of the HRA to the UK on a Global Venture later in the year as well as to Footstep 12 in Slovakia this August.

The links between the HRA Foundation, Friends of Nowder and Global Footsteps represent a fantastic step forward for our charity, it will bring with it many opportunities for improved intercultural understanding and education about many environmental, sustainability and development issues. We will do everything we can to help it flourish and grow.

by Morgan Phillips, Global Footsteps Co-ordinator

The Rotary Relief Fund Kisumu

Yesterday afternoon, Alice, Aby and I met up with some people from the Rotary Club in Kisumu...

Tuesday 7th July

It was another busy day today, we met in town before heading over to see an old friend of our very own Dennis Mitchell, Sat Jobanputra at his beautiful home in Kisumu town centre. He moved into this house when it was built in 1937. He told me how the city had changed dramatically in the proceeding years. Kisumu sprang into existence in 1901 when the British completed the Mombassa – Nairobi – Kisumu railway, built to link the Indian Ocean to Africa’s biggest water body, Lake Victoria. The Lake is the origin of the great River Nile and Kisumu is on its coast. Mr. Jobanputra was born here and told me that during his lifetime the population has risen tenfold from 50,000 to 500,000. He has watched it spread outwards as more and more people arrive here from the surrounding rural areas in search of work. What they find is a difficult life, over 50% of the people live in slums or shanty towns, some of the poorest in Africa. Although the city centre, at the moment, is coping with the volume of vehicles here, it is surely only a matter of time before it becomes as gridlocked as Nairobi (or London!)

Mr. Jobanputra, now retired, used to be an active member of the Rotary Club in Kisumu. We wanted to know what the Rotary Club had done here in response to the Post Election Violence in late 2007. He took us to meet an American couple Dan and Patty Schmelzer at their home in Kisumu town centre. Dan and Patty are heavily involved with the Rotary Club here and were instrumental in the Rotary relief project that was launched in the wake of the post election violence. The relief project is ongoing and utilises the US $20,000 fund they accumulated from around 20 different organisations, of which Global Footsteps was one. Dan reported to us what they have achieved. They spent the money in three key areas. 1. Emergency food relief, 2. Provision of medical services, 3. A peace initiative.

1. Food: Four local volunteers went into the slum areas to uncover individuals and families who were badly effected and were on the brink of starvation. They helped around 1,200 people to stave off hunger
2. Medicine: Two medical camps were set up in the rural areas to help people needing basic treatment for illnesses and injuries. On top of this they funded life saving operations for people who were very badly injured during the violence.
3. Peace: A headline grabbing and very effective initiative was set up by Rotary to promote peace in the city. They wanted to spread a message of peace and settled on an innovative way of doing it. Rather than spending money on billboards they decided to approach the local 'boda boda' bike taxis. A boda boda is a push bike with a seat on the back for a passenger who pays around 30 pence to travel a distance of around 2-3 kms in the city centre. Rotary decided that they would make t-shirts with the slogan 'Peace begins with me' and they distributed them gradually to 1000 boda boda cyclists who wore them as they travelled around town carrying passengers. This made the cyclists themselves committed to the peace movement and their enthusiasm rubbed off on the other residents of the city. Rotary gave the cyclists small financial incentives to keep wearing the t-shirts which facilitated the good will between them.

As an extension to the boda boda peace initiative Rotary helped the wives of the cyclists to set up businesses. They did this through a micro-finance initiative as a Small Micro Enterprise Programme (SMEP). This has been very successful and continues to grow as women take out and pay back loans of increasing size to grow their businesses from side of the road shacks to down town shops.

Rotary has spent $10,000 of the $20,000 originally donated, the focus has now shifted to sustainable long term development. Through the SMEP they are helping environmentally and socially sound businesses to start up and grow.

Dan has promised to send us an interim report, when he does I will ask permission from him to publish it on our main website.

Dan and Patty also run Capstone Ministries Child and Family Restoration Outreach in Kisumu, please visit their website: http://www.capstoneministries.org/