Its taken me a while to get around to it, but I wanted to update you all of my recent visit to Bangladesh. I was during my planned time in Dhaka, so following some impromptu diary management, i hooked up with Dr Zaki our bangladesh co-ordinator a couple of days before I flew back to the UK.

Having previoulsy screened through CV's and Zaki meeting up with prospective field workers, a long and difficult recruitment process bought us down to 2 outstanding candidates. It was key for us to find individuals that not only had potential but also would have the technological know how to help us build our database of street children in the Dhaka region.

After a long and enjoyable conversation in the Bailey Road district, it was agreed that Shoeb and Shipa would join our organisation as our first employees effective from the 1st of June. They will undertake a two week surveilance period where they will visit various locations across Dhaka to research which areas draw the worst affected children. This will then be whittled down to 2-3 key areas where we will concentrate our counselling and relationship-building efforts.

Following this, it is aimed that we will begin regular contact to approximately 60-80 children and will begin to collte a case study for each child. We will then assess these case studies to decide which children are the worst affected. These children will then be invited to our proposed rehab centre.

We hope you all welcome Shoeb and Shipa aboard at this very exciting time that restless beings, with your help is able to establish direct contact with these children for the first time. Over the coming weeks and months, I will keep you updated as to the progress of Ship and Shoeb. In the meantime, we urge all our supporters to help us raise the initial capital required for the rehab centre as well as committing to long term standing orders in order o make the rehab centre a reality and an opportunity to finally offer the streets lying on the streets of Dhaka, hope for an end to awful start hey have had in their short lives.

We need your help and more importantly these children depend on us, restless beings, restless at the thought of them spending another night under no shelter prone to exploitation and violence.

Mabrur - Director of Restless Beings

Hmm id like to ask about how much information you have about the gangs controlling these street children and what if anything can be done to stop these criminals.

when i am in desh, i reside in Gulshan 1, Dhaka and over the last few years i have met a lot of the kids who 'work' on the gulshan 1 circle, 1 particular child had his arm severed off by one of the gangs so it would help raise more money.

this kind of thing is very common unfortunately. as a charity the area that we can really do work is with the kids and not so much with the criminals as this where law enforcing agencies could really help. its funny you mention gulshan, as this is one of the more affluent area, can you imagine what it is like in mogbazar for example?

Hmm yes iv witnessed it with my own eyes.. Magbazzar is where we buy our shutki from and it is very open in terms of the kids being used as drug runners and girls as prostitutes. I intend to spend a year or two in Dhaka in a years time or so and will be glad to help in any way shape or form..

hopefully by then we will have our rehab centre up and running and perhaps you can drop by regularly and help out then. we have already had a couple od develpoment students ask to work over there too...

Hey Shahad (or is it Mohammed you go by? Please do correct me!)
Thats great, as Mabrur said our rehad centre should be up by then and your contribution in anyway would be hugely appreciated by us but more importantly by the kids we intend to help.
And just to point out regarding the gangs - though we are mainly focusing on the children and helping them in terms of getting them out of their current, dire situations and working on their development we hope to, after some years, when the rehad centre has gone through a couple of cycles to build an evidence base so that we can present our findings and put pressure on the relevant people so they in turn can put pressure on gangs and deal with them appropriately.

Hey yup Shahad will do fine,

yes i would be glad to help when i am in the city. I have had the privilege to make some good friends in Dhaka and with some very influential people so i can hopefully help some processes move a bit quicker...

i like what you guys are doin and will keep an eye on your progress

Excellent

Hey Guys,

Inshallah i should be flying over to Dhaka around the 22nd of the month and will be there for a few weeks.

Give us a shout if you want me to do anything while im over there...