Empowerment and Hope

For morning devotions at school we always sing a song in Bengali. Today we sung “As the Deer” and it was really interesting to sing a song I knew well. We sing that song at church camp, and even though I didn’t know how to pronounce the words, it was nice to be reminded of home.

During tea I was talking to two other students about different language methodologies. One was to jump right in, to live with native speakers and say as many words as many times as possible in a day. Another was to not speak at all for the first two weeks (living with native speakers) and let yourself get used to hearing the language so you would be able to hear in your head how words should sound once you started speaking, The third was the iceberg idea, that you can access only a small portion of what you’ve heard without thinking about it while you are learning about things. The more often you say, hear, write or think it, the higher on the iceberg it moves. Everything you learn builds off of each other and the expanse of your automatic language reflexes gets bigger and bigger. I find the learning process quite interesting so it was fun to hear about different theories for learning language.

While I was at the CRWRC office, I looked through their library, a living-room- sized space with bookshelves in a library of congress system, pretty fancy. I opened a book about informal learning and how informal learning is the way that most people learn the information that is crucial for their work and is the most productive and effective way to learn. I’ve heard from many panels about engineering in the real world that most of what you do you learn on the job rather than drawing much from what you learned in school. I’m really excited that I have the opportunity to do a lot of informal learning during my stay here; I can feel the knowledge building already, and my Spidy sense tells me that there is a whole mountain of potential available. Not necessarily information knowledge, but relational, community, thought process, appreciation, organization and innovation.

One of Nancy’s many gifts is making sure that lots of opportunity doors are open. She’s set me up to really experience Bangladesh from all different angles and to understand the work that the CWRC is doing here. I’m really grateful that she is in my life and made this opportunity possible for me. I’m in a class learning Bengali rather than with a private tutor so I can meet other people my age in the area. There are always people coming and going at Nancy and Kohima’s house and it’s great to have the opportunity to talk to people who are working through the CRWRC in different ways.

Deb and Krista leave tomorrow, and I’ll be sad to see them go, but Nancy and I might come visit them where Deb lives where the CRWRC helps run a hospital and school (Deb is a nurse). Deb is working on getting her doctorate in seminary. As part of this, she is exploring what it means to be a sanctuary from a Christian standpoint and figuring out how that knowledge can be used to promote peace in a community. It has been wonderful to learn from her and her experience.

While I am here Nancy has planned for me to work with multiple partner organizations; a large part of that is getting a chance to see firsthand what those organizations are doing for people right now, every day. Today I visited Mirpur, one of the better off slums of Dhaka (I know that sounds weird, but I can’t think of another way to put it). It was inspiring; all the concepts that I thought were so amazing from SATHI’s presentation was there in front of my eyes today.

The field manager picked me up in a CNG (compressed natural gas vehicle). CNGs are these tiny little green three wheeled cars (think bigger than the red and yellow plastic toy car kids sit in and smaller than a smart car, I’ll work on getting a picture up of one). We got stuck in traffic for a while and had to refuel on the way—while the car was refilling, we got out and stood a distance away, as the refueling can sometimes goes a little wrong. Five minutes later, a nice-sized puff of smoke came from the CNG, but fortunately it was still fine to continue on our journey. The cars that are taxies have two pillows pretty pillows in the shelf under the rear window with a Kleenex box in between, which is kind of cool. The ride was over an hour, but I enjoyed watching the people, buildings, rickshaws, CNGs, cars, overcrowded buses and stands along the sides of the road.

When we arrived at Mirpur, the office staff leaders met us and took us through the narrow twisting lanes stacked with small, one room houses and the slightly wider roads lined with stands of things to sell. There were old men sitting near stands having easy conversations, women carrying metal jars with broad curved bases and narrow necks. As we can to the narrow roads, there were many small wooden frames set up on the ground with children embroidering saris. Children passed by and mothers chatted. Some were washing clothes or helping younger children bathe. Lots of people going about their daily business. The houses were very small, and the bricks on the path were broken, but the thing that stuck out to me the most what that there were people living their lives. Much different that my life, but living their lives none-the-less.

Our first stop was to visit Farahana, a woman who hand-painted beautiful floral saris(long piece of cloth for a wrap in Indian style clothing). As my Bengali is still really rough, the field guide translated. She has been painting for eight years, and is now teaching three girls how to paint them as well. Her painting is careful and precise, perfectly symmetric and well crafted. She is part of a SAHTI small group, and with that group has saved money in order to make loans and aid available to group members. Farahana borrowed money from her group to get the materials to begin painting saris. With the profits she has paid back her loan and turned her saris into a small profitable business.

She paints the saris at home and her husband, who is in the embroidery business, helps her sell them. She uses the money she earns to buy things for her two children, making sure they are well cared for and have the things they need for school, as well as keeping her house nice. Her business gives her pride because she helping make sure that her children have what they need to grow and learn. Her SATHI group has given her the support she needed to do that.

Next was an adolescent group of 15 girls between age 12 and 14. One girl, the chairperson of the group introduced the girls and spoke for the group. She was polite and elegant, much more than I ever remember being at 14. The girls had decided that they wanted to improve their community by helping clean up and decided to be called the cleaning group.

They meet every 15 days and came up with a plan of action. They all clean up around their homes every day, and once month they go out to the street and cleaned up trash. They made paper crowns they wore when they cleaned that read “Cleaner’s Group” and hoped that others in the village would follow their example. I was really excited when they handed a crown to me and one of the girls put it on my head. It was really inspiring to hear the girls working to lead by example – I love the leading-by-example concept, and these girls are buying into their community and encouraging others to do the same.

Last I visited a women’s small group and was able to sit in on their weekly meeting. After we all introduced ourselves, two women shared stories about how loans from the group had helped them provide for themselves. One woman borrowed 6,000 taka from the group after her husband died. With that 6,000 she started a sari business, paid back the group and is now able to support her children. Another woman borrowed 10,000 taka to buy a rickshaw for her husband, who works as a driver. Without having to pay for renting a rickshaw, her husband is able to earn much more and they paid back the group and now her husband only has to work half as much as he used to, which gives him more time with the family.

There were two posters wrapped in clear plastic that were used by the leader of the subsection to give an informational session on anti-trafficking. Two other women shared stories about human trafficking; human trafficking is a real danger in Bangladesh, and through this small group the women were able to learn about it. If people better understand a threat, they can hopefully more easily avoid it. Through informational sessions, SATI is helping to equip people with knowledge that better equips them to improve their life.

The really amazing thing about this group was that they could have been anywhere, having a discussion: soccer moms, out to a fancy tea, sitting in a living room, or at the market. The thing that makes this discussion stick out is that it is about building community through encouragement, support and sharing vital knowledge. They make a choice every week to come together and learn about how to make life better for themselves and their community. When I asked what their favorite part about the group was, a lot said that the nutritional information they learned helped them nourish their children better, and by example they are hoping that others will use their knowledge to nourish children as well.

It was wonderful to see people intentionally participating in community to provide resources and support for enabling each other to improve their lives. I was looking back the the SATHI power point, and this mission statement explains exactly what SATHI is actually doing, every day.

“To be an organization where the poor and their communities are empowered so that all experience hope.”

My last thought is that I wish I knew of more people so actively engaged in bringing hope to life through community empowerment.