“AED 700 = a child’s freedom from the slums of Dhaka…”
The Dhaka Project, a non-profit charity that works to shine a light for the poverty stricken slum dwellers of Dhaka, is a deeply passionate labour of kindness and hope started by Emirates Airline flight attendant Maria Conceicao in 2005. In essence, this wonderful project helps children of the slums of Dhaka by breaking their cycle of poverty and given them a foundation, a base from which to build a better life. The children’s education is a key focus but the charity also has 2 other important areas it works on: women skills development and men skills development through the Catalista arm of the project. While The Dhaka Project focuses on children, Catalista addresses the needs of the parents.
Maria Conceicao, who won the Emirates Woman magazine’s ‘Woman of the Year 2009’ award in recognition of her tireless, dedicated and selfless act of caring has developed and nurtured an initiative that truly does make an immediate difference. Some of the amazing accomplishments already achieved include:
- A school has been setup and 600 children (aged 4 and above) are attending.
- The Catalista school is utilized for adults to teach basic reading & writing English courses as well as general knowledge, hygiene, family planning and etiquette classes in evenings.
- A day care centre and pre-school has been setup and has 50 young children attending.
- All the children have been vaccinated against Hepatitis, Polio and Typhoid and Measles.
- A sewing/handcrafts training centre has been set up and successfully trained 80 women.
This is only the beginning and The Dhaka Project and Catalista aim to achieve some of the following in the coming years:
1. Raise enough money [$1 million US] to buy a plot of land and build a school in Dhaka for 1000 children for primary / secondary / pre-university education + vocational skills training.
2. Continue to provide food, shelter, clothing, education and medical care to the children under the care of The Dhaka Project and Catalista.
3. Find ways and means to generate revenue so that The Dhaka Project and Catalista can, over time, become financially self-sufficient e.g. retail shop selling used donated clothes, catering of lunch meals to office workers, sell dresses/handbags/ladies purse made by sewing school …
4. Inculcate in the children at a young age a caring concern for the environment through programmes like neighbourhood clean-up day, installing water wells for the community, setting up public lavatories for the community, shower facilities, tree-planting, solar panels, clean up the lakes.
5. Open a Medical Centre for the slums.
Apart from the above ‘big picture’ goals, The Dhaka Project is hoping to find families in Dubai and other countries willing to finance slum children vacations in Dubai, in order to expose them to the world. They are also hoping to find the fathers jobs in Dubai as office boys, maintenance, cleaners, room attendants, baggage handlers etc. Emirates Airlines and Meridian Hotel joined this initiative last year with Emirates employing an office boy while Meridian Hotel employed 2 room attendants and 1 laundry boy. Arabian Explorers is also going to employ a maintenance cleaner from January 2010.
It is easy to help and the numbers speak for themselves:
AED 1 – A Child’s lunch for a day
AED 1 – 8 bananas OR 1 kilo of rice
AED 15 – A set of school books (class 1)
AED 10 – A school bag for a child
AED 20 – A week’s worth of baby food
AED 70 – Uniform + shoes + socks
AED 100 – Vaccination for Hepatitis B and Typhoid for a child (includes preliminary blood test) + Basic health cover for a year.
AED 500 – A sewing machine and raw materials to practice with in the sewing training centre
AED 1000 – buys a rickshaw
AED 3000 – Build a basic house with furniture for a family
Every dollar, every dirham makes a difference. As one volunteer, Richard Ng summarized after a few days in Dhaka, “Seeing abject poverty in the slums of Dhaka, seeing how The Dhaka Project brings hope to very poor children, interacting with the children in different ways – all these cumulatively left an indelible imprint on me. I left The Dhaka Project humbled and very thankful for what I have in life and not dwell on what I do not have.”
Please visit www.thedhakaproject.org
