Baselines

dear friends,
I am in transit! I spent my afternoon and evening in the hallowed halls of JFK international, waiting for my connecting flight across the ocean. It actually wasn't as boring as one might think. A large TV was broadcasting the world cup, and it was a lot of fun to be a part of a truly international, bound together by an enjoyment of sport. By the way, england plays the US tomorrow (saturday) at 2:30pm. USA!! USA!!
I wanted to take this chance to set a framework from which to understand the situation of disenfranchised children in Bangladesh. Whenever I take friends to Bangladesh, I make a point to first take them to the slums, the hot, dirty, diseased, and crowded squatter settlements where most of our children lived before Basic Needs. It is only after one gains a perspective of the extremity of poverty from which are children are derived that one gains a realistic understanding of how far these kids have come. Indeed, in the next few weeks, I will be relating a lot of stories about miraculous transformations, of the little ones being brought from despair to joy, from deprivation to prosperity. As humans, we love these kinds of stories. It is exactly why Slumdog Millionaire was such a smash hit. We got to see a deserving young person transform his fortunes, and in the process, gain wealth, and the girl. What could be better?!
Though inspirational, these stories can leave us with a certain degree of complacency. Sure, things are bad for these "slumdogs," but look at how happy it ends up for them! Things can't be so bad! In fact, dear friends, things are worse than bad. For every child that is helped by Basic Needs, hundreds and even thousands of children in Bangladesh are falling through the cracks. One estimate puts the number of street children living in the city of Dhaka alone at 250,000, a population roughly the size of Richmond, Virginia. And this is one city in one country in the developing world. Every day, the malnutrition ward of Dhaka Shishu (Children's) hospital is packed with children dying from no other disease than a lack of food. Every night around my apartment in Dhaka, children huddle under buildings or sleep in the open air, with no one to care for them. Each day for these children is a day lost securing both their future and the future of their struggling nation. Most of these children will face a future little brighter than those of their parents before them, and perhaps worse.
This is the situation. We have identified the problem. But how do we find a solution? What's more, where do we even begin to tackle such a massive issue? What I hope to communicate in future posts, is that the secret to doing great things is to start by doing something, anything. By thinking small and acting small, we can do our part to change the sometimes vicious world in which we live.
peace friends