Toiletries and mobile phones for the slum children in Dhaka

During the preparation of the art exhibition Mara and me visited Dhaka. Our trip was from September 11th till 16th.

The target was to make photographies and to talk to people.

But we didn’t come with empty hands. We bought sweets, toys and mobile phones for around 1000 USD. We even had one Notebook with us.

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Toys, sweets and toiletries we distributed to all children, who are supported by Maria Cristina Foundation.

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The mobile phones we gave as rewards for the best results at school. 12 children received smartphones.

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The notebook we brought we gave to Jewel who is managing all local work of the foundation. This will improve a lot his daily office work for MCF.

Although we didn’t reach our major target, means to take the pictures for the book and the exhibition we are very satisfied about our trip. We have done lots of things which we didn’t really plan on.

Job-searching workshop with young adults

Almost one day we spend with young adults in a very nice and important workshop.
We discussed

  • strategies about looking for a new job
  • how to write good CVs
  • how interviews are done and what the most common questions are

Beside theoretical topics we acted in different role-plays in order to practice different situations at the interview, the right body language and right answers on the most common questions.

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Teenager workshop

The Bangladesh society is quite closed if the teenager related topics should be discussed. Even school is not giving answers on some simple but very important question related to growing-up. These young adults simply don’t have anybody to whom they can talk regarding drugs, alcohol, aids, man stuff and many other important topics.
In the second workshop 13 boys asked and discussed all those important questions.

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Trip outside the city

Some of the people who are living in the slums of Dhaka never left there. Some of them were even born here. As we prepared for another photography session related to the local fishermen we saw the eyes of these people. We saw that they would like to see the river and the fishermen.

We decided to take all of them for a trip outside the city. We took several rickshaws and went to Kaskura river. After eating at a restaurant there and after some ice cream we took the boat. We spent a beautiful afternoon in the beautiful nature of Bangladesh. But even more important was that we made lots of people happy.

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Our spending in the project were roughly like this:

  • 900 USD for toiletries
  • 1000 USD for presents (sweets, mobile phones and toys)
  • 300 USD donation towards school fees
  • 300 USD we spent during our stay in Dhaka (for trip and presents)
  • 1200 USD we spend for 3 airline tickets including costs for overweight

In total we spent around 3700 USD.

As we didn’t get all photographs that we need, we already started planning our next trip to Dhaka.