Bangladesh

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Photo of the week: letters from Bangladesh

1 September 2010 by Archie Law | 2 comments

This week’s photo of the week comes from a teacher in Bangladesh who wrote to us about ActionAid’s assistance with preparing a school curriculum.

Dear Friend,
Thanks to your support of ActionAid and The Next Step in Bangladesh, I am now able to give pre-school children a quality education.

My name is Sagarika Saha. I teach pre-school children aged four to six at an ActionAid Child Centre in Angaria village (District of Manikganj, central Bangladesh). Until recently, there were no specific guidelines for running pre-schools and we teachers did not know the best way to teach these young children and prepare them for primary school.

A student arrives at the school in central Bangladesh

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What’s the link between economic growth and human development?

25 June 2010 by Archie Law | 3 comments

Last week I attended a fantastic conference that the Lowy Institute organised on innovative approaches to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It was a bit of a star studded line up with a terrific array of development practitioners from civil society, government, the UN and the World Bank.

For me the most interesting question was raised in the first panel. The question concerned the links between economic growth and human development. This produced a diverse range of opinions, as you’d expect.

The World Bank’s view was that robust and sustainable economic growth is the primary driver of human development. At the same time, the Bank acknowledged that inequality is the biggest constraint to achieving the MDGs in the region.  That all sounds a bit confused to me so maybe we need to talk some more with them about that.

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TOTO MKII is on the road to Bangladesh

4 June 2010 by Archie Law | 2 comments

Today’s an exciting day for ActionAid as Outreach Bloggers Sharna Bremner and Joel Katz head to Bangladesh to establish a blogging post as part of Project TOTO. You’ll have a chance to follow their journey on the ActionAid Blog at http://blogs.actionaid.org.au/toto/

One of the problems in communicating poverty and injustice to an external audience is the fact that the root causes of poverty can be invisible to the outsider.  This experience will take Sharna and Joel into the middle of poor people’s worlds  and enable the guys to get a feel for the daily struggle that people living in extreme poverty face.

They will also hopefully feel a sense of the euphoria that accompanies a small win in the fight against poverty and its these wins that keep us all dedicated to this fight!

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Photo of the week: sex workers’ safety at stake

17 May 2010 by Archie Law | No comments

In Bangladesh, prostitution is legal as long as the individual is at least 18 years old. However, the widespread abuse of a drug called Oradexon, a drug usually used to fatten cattle, has meant that younger girls (some as young as twelve) employed as sex workers are able to seem older and more attractive to clients.

Bobi says she has been given Oradexon by her madam as soon as she arrived at the brothel.

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How would you want your $100 spent?

6 January 2010 by Archie Law | 22 comments

Education is one of the best ways for people to lift themselves out of poverty, and a powerful weapon in the fight against AIDS. Education is often seen as a privilege. It is not. It is one of many human rights that poor people are denied every day.

Sima Akhter (8) during lessons in class three of Changacol Government Primary school in Shahrasti, Chandpur, Bangladesh

Eight year old Sima during lessons in class three of a government primary school in Chandpur, Bangladesh

However, 72 million children in the world’s poorest countries – 57% of them girls – are denied a primary education while around 750 million adults are considered illiterate.

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