As part of my last days at VSO, I helped raise the above amount for flood relief work in Bangladesh. More pictures here. Full update on our work at the Flood Relief page.

At the moment, though I’m honestly thinking that the miniscule scale of our response against the disaster became extraordinarily clear when I was told that our relief package would only supply enough food for two to three days in a regular-sized family.

Better than nothing, yes. I have no doubt that many would agree that we in Bangladesh need to move from a culture of relief to that of prevention. Easier said than done..

I am writing to you specifically as you are former NetCorps volunteers of Chinese-Canadian background. We have 3 placements this year in China that have specifically asked for Mandarin speakers and so we are trying to do some targeted recruitment within the Chinese-Canadian community to fill these positions.

If you know of any leads that would be of use where we could advertise (i.e. community newspapers, online groups etc) would you be able to forward us the links? Or if you know of anyone who would be interested in these positions please direct them to our website www.vsocan.org/youth.

Thank Allah it’s over.

While it is true I do say that with a sense of great relief, I also say it without an ounce of regret. As a volunteer, I have truly tested my own selflessness, and with my $250 USD per month salary (which is enough to live on quite comfortably—can you imagine it?), I can safely say that I have contributed my heart and soul—two prized possessions that are free of the economic realities in which the minority world (aka western world) currently toils away.

It has not been easy. Bangladesh–no wait, just Dhaka—is noisy, chaotic, polluted and disgusting. This city is by far one of the worst I have ever experienced and I’m sure its pollutants will be firmly lodged in me for years to come. I recall that in my earliest days, I arrived to a Dhaka that I perceived to be absolutely flooded with beggars. Because it was Ramadan, Dhaka’s streets were filled with countryside migrants searching for the giving that is dictated under the direction of Islam. It is debatable whether this giving is sustainable, but that’s another issue. I came to understand what poverty really meant.

Poverty is more complicated than the needy woman’s face. It has underlying causes and effects—forces that are in our power to change, but the change is slow. It is not for a lack of industriousness that so many people in Bangladesh suffer, nor is it a lack of creativity, ingenuity or even passion. No, it is for a choice of opportunity that Bangladeshis hunger—and that is something that still is in my power to change. I’ve since chosen tourism as a means to do that.

Why?

Because outside Dhaka, I’ve discovered something pure and unexplored. I’ve experienced how the torrential monsoon rains also brings a dearth of delicious and cheap mangos. I’ve learned to see beauty in Bangladesh’s brutality. Most importantly, I’ve found a place—whom some have lovingly referred to as the “Armpit of India” (just look at a map to see what I mean)—that will forge me into the travel writer I’ve dreamt of becoming. My road was meant to the frontiers of travel.

But back to development. I have also learned that our extraordinary wealth in the West, far removed as it may seem, is completely tied to the current world economic model. My understanding is limited in this regard, so please correct me if I am wrong, but I do firmly believe that financial policies that benefit the West come at great cost and disparity to the majority world. In other words, our extraordinary wealth comes with staggering human cost, and we in North America grow fat with the innumerable desires our lifestyle provides. Certainly, the fault belongs with no one. However, responsibility for the relentless pursuit of change lies with us all.

Working in development has also raised similarly thorny issues in my heart. On one hand I have now witnessed the expenditure of millions of dollars, all in the name of change, progress and development. But because development is not firmly regulated by principles of efficiency and profit, I have witnessed some mightily poor execution of development projects (not naming names here, but let me say that VSO’s ethos is far better than some other organizations I have come across). The bottom line is this: the inefficiency of our enterprise is absolutely staggering. But that’s the nature of the beast.

At the level of my own work, I have discovered that the digital divide is in fact a widening chasm: ICT knowledge among development organizations, both international AND local, lags farther and farther behind. For the great majority of my time in Bangladesh, I feel like I’ve been been putting out ICT fires, far more than I’ve created systemic and long-lasting change.

But on the other hand, looking outside ICT, I have now been imbued with a sense of how unjust our world truly is, and how the people who work in this field are motivated by passion, creativity and the desire for change. This force is significant, and steadfastly opposed the pursuit of the almighty taka/dollar/baht/kuai.

I feel, in the deepest reaches of my heart, that poverty is a disgusting dark blight on our humanity that I simply cannot ignore. I urge any of you reading this far to look deeper at your own lives for what is truly important, and consider an experience like mine one day. It has been a journey I will never forget, despite the misgivings I expressed earlier.

To you, I say the following: let your idealism get you here, and as it inevitably fades, let your passion maintain you through the experience. The change I’ve felt in me has been great, despite the fact the change has not always been mirrored in the environment around me. But it’s coming.

My future is uncertain for the time being, but perhaps in next month’s update, things will be clearer. I have decided to pursue what I will call, for now at least, “tourism development.” My vision is a form of travel that highly stresses the positive impact it has on preserving unique cultures and protecting precious environments, both of which are often left to decay under the corrosive effects of corruption.

My invitation to visit is still open. Please, *please* do not let the international headlines (gee, let me see here: floods, poverty, riots, corruption) sway you from the fact that tourism is valuable force for change in our world. The great majority of you have travelled with me before, and you must know that I wouldn’t live here it there wasn’t something positive, fun and enjoyable (plus tasty and alcoholic!) about being here in Bangladesh. Just tell me if/when you can come, and I promise you an intense and eye-opening experience few in the world today claim to have.

Until next time,
Mikey

Image courtesy Tom Wipperman.
We at VSO Bangladesh have volunteers in some of the worst-hit areas. We have therefore decided to raise some funds for the relief effort. For one week, from August 13 to August 20th, we will collect donations and provide these to the Chief Advisor’s Relief Fund (the government’s central donation fund) with the hope of assisting our host country get back on its feet. By donating to us, you can know that your money is reaching the people coordinating the effort more directly than donating to other sources.

Every little bit helps—and a little bit goes a LONG way in Bangladesh.

Click here for more information.
http://www.mikeyleung.ca/flood-relief-fundraising/

Once you have visited this page, click the “Make a Donation” button to donate. After that, please forward this message to anybody you think can help.

On behalf of VSO Bangladesh’s volunteers and staff, we thank you in advance for your assistance.

Mikey Leung
~~~~~~~~~~
Mikey Leung, IT Specialist
Voluntary Services Overseas, Bangladesh

I’ve started using Wordpress as a content-management system (CMS), and it has dramatically improved my website turnover. More importantly, the organizations benefit from self-content management, as these organizations can begin using the CMS tools packaged with Wordpress to begin releasing news and information about their work.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that the quality of their communications will increase, especially if they had no devoted capacity to do external communication work it in the first place, but let’s compare against some of the major International NGO sites in Bangladesh:

• DfID Bangladesh (it’s absolutely terrible!)
• ActionAid Bangladesh (more up to date but suffering from something as simple as bad navigation)
• VSO Bangladesh (we don’t even have one, I’m embarassed to say)
• CARE Bangladesh is the only one that stands out from the crowd. Although the site provides a lot more information about CARE’s work, it still suffers from some design issues such as misshapen photography and inconsistent navigation—plus most of their pages still use static HTML! (So was I a few months ago, as I hadn’t done web programming for years already), but that’s why I’m writing about revelations today.

It is apparent that few of the local offices of the major International NGOs in Bangladesh commit any resources to communicating on the Internet, which is a shame because it is my belief that grassroots voices are the ones that need the most promotion. The internet’s communications tools provide this capability this extremely easily and cheaply.

Compared against some of my latest work on Wordpress (the content on these sites isn’t ready yet—but the point of this blog is that I don’t have to put the content on myself—the local staff can):

• Ashar Alo Society, Dhaka
• Gram Bikash Kendra, Dinajpur

Again, using a customized Wordpress engine circumvents these issues of inconsistency and provides for a much better user experience, which results in greater professionalism and hence, more ability to attract donor funds. Kudos to the folks at Wordpress for empowering us this way.

For the techies out there, here is some more knowledge: Currently I’m using Dreamhost as my web-hosting service, as Dreamhost provides a one-click installation of a Wordpress blog with a set of ready-to-customize themes. I don’t even muck around with the database installations or configurations—the folks at Dreamhost have taken care of it all.

Some of the packaged themes even use drop-down or pop-out menus, which in my view is one of the best ways to set up a navigation menu, given the SEO benefits and “coolness” of a pop-out CSS menu.

Any other thoughts from the greater web-building audience? I appreciate any advice as I’m trying to improve my skills here too..

**Update:

Here are a few other links for the major I/NGOs and development actors in Bangladesh:

• Concern Universal and Concern Worldwide’s Bangladesh site.
• CIDA’s Bangladesh Site

I will keep adding more as I find them… mainly because I might be looking for a new job soon!!

Greetings from a hot and steamy land—and not in a very sexy way (sorry for the misleading headline). Bathing in my own perspiration is not really my idea of fun.

I’m in Parbatipur, a backwater town of Northwestern Bangladesh whose only claim to fame is that is a major railway junction for the surrounding area (ie, I’m in the middle of nowhere, by most standards). Other than the railway station there is a multi-acre fisheries facility, and a few hundred mud and tin homes spread around the innumerable fields. The pace is much slower here, truly timeless. Instead of the rot and the floods of a wet Dhaka day, I walk past goats and cows and furry little sheep on my way to work.

Even after nine months, I am still completely amazed how life here is often lived at the mercy of some extraordinarily violent weather. In Canada, I grew up under the dry extremes of -30ºC to +30ºC temperatures, but in Bangladesh the extreme is of the “soaking wet” variety.

Most of you know of Bangladesh because of its incredible flooding rather than say, its extremely friendly culture or its beautiful rural landscapes. Some of you maybe even heard about mudslides that killed 130 people two weeks ago in Chittagong. But what most of you may not know is why this flooding happens: during the monsoon season, airborne moisture from the Bay of Bengal accumulates as it heads northward towards the wall that is the Himalayan mountain range. The buildup results in great droves of driving rain, sometimes arriving horizontally when backed by monsoonal winds. All of it causes serious havoc to human inhabitants below.

During a monsoonal rain, life comes to an absolute standstill, especially in Bangladesh’s crowded cities. Because of a lack of a decent drainage systems (which is a result of a lack of planning, which in turn is a result of bad governance), Dhaka’s broad avenues become incredible rivers littered with stopped vehicles, whose engines cannot tolerate the sometimes waist-high waters.

Fortunately, I’m not mired in that mess at the moment. I’m enjoying the calmer confines of Northwest Bangladesh, also known as Golden Bengal, for some more ICT development work—this time I’m installing a Wordpress-based website for Gram Bikash Kendra, or ‘Village Development Center,’ whose work it is to assist in the development of the poorest people of the northwest, including the indigenous people of the area.

While they’re training indigenous farmers on the intricacies of pig and rabbit-raising, I’m busy training them to use the features of Wordpress’ content-management system. Like I’ve said before my work doesn’t suffer from a lack of idiosyncracies, but it still does suffer from a serious lack of electricity! I will post a link to the site when it comes online.

research and story by Neeti Gobeshona Kendro. Republished with permission.

Anisur remembers his first day pulling a rickshaw well: it was only five months ago but he already has many of the traits of a rickshaw puller of much more experience. He has lived his whole life surrounded by rickshaws – he was born 12 years ago in the rickshaw garage where his father worked and still lives there in a small room with his mother and father and six siblings. Conditions are cramped.

Against his father’s wishes, Anisur learnt to pull a rickshaw from another garage puller. One day he took a rickshaw out and was riding when a middle aged passenger got up and asked him to drive to Adabor town hall. When he got there he was given 12 Taka. It was his first fare, a taka for each of his years. That day he earned 80 Taka, his first income.

Being a rickshaw puller is hard, but being a child as well is harder: ‘I can’t pull lots of people as I am not strong enough. They don’t look at my age but demand I take three people’. Some passengers do show sympathy because he is a child but many more exploit this and undercut the fare. Others will shout at him and beat him for driving slowly, seeing him as just a puller, not a child.

‘They should not use bad words’ he says. ‘Rickshaw pullers have no respect in society’ but Anisur thinks that as human beings they deserve to be respected: ‘A rickshaw puller pulls to earn money. It is not a crime, but their fate’.

When he is not pulling a rickshaw Anisur likes to play football with his friends near his house, finding the energy despite the long mornings driving through Dhaka (his father takes out the same rickshaw in the afternoon). He looks after his brothers and sisters whilst his mother does housework: ‘I like to play with them’.

Anisur is one of just 6% of rickshaw pullers who have followed their father into the role. His father is very angry that Anisur drives a rickshaw and wants him to go to school, but Anisur likes having money rather than an education.

Anisur’s dream is to buy a house for his parents. They have no land. Once, his grandfather had a great deal of cultivable land in the north of Bangladesh, but after his grandfather died his father lost the land through gambling. The house was washed away by the river, leaving the family destitute. This is why he wants to buy a house, to bring the family back some of their lost status.

This dream is a long way off however: already Anisur has had a rickshaw stolen which his father is paying for at 50 Taka a day. They still have 1000 Taka left to pay back, but he says that the garage owner is good and keeps an honest ledger with him, helping save the money to try to meet his dreams.

Adapted from ‘Driving with Dignity: The Rickshaw Pullers of Dhaka, a participatory photographic exhibition by Neeti Gobeshona Kendro. See Tom Wipperman’s blog for more info.

Dhaka – Improvised Raincoat, originally uploaded by Mikey Leung.

Monsoonal rains don’t keep the city’s hardworking rickshaw wallahs from their work. In fact you have to respect their creativity in getting the job done!

As I wrote in a previous post, the trusty Hobu got a friend and I back to Lalmatia yet again, but this time as the streets were absolutely flooded with monsoonal rain. Again, my hat is off to the hardworking men of this country who keep its passengers moving with little more than their own two legs.

In other news, a good friend of mine has achieved some serious successes in publicizing the plight of rickshaw wallahs in Bangladesh. Tom Wipperman is another VSO volunteer who despite some challenges at his organization, put together a participatory photo exhibition featuring the rickshaw wallahs of Dhaka. Unfortunately the exhibition photography isn’t online yet, but the photographs were displayed for three days at the Russian Cultural Institute last week.

Please do take a moment to browse Tom’s blog about the exhibition launch, and learn more about the incredible stories these men have to share.

After traipsing around on the internet, I found a set of beautiful and easy-to-understand logos created by some folks in Brazil to represent the MDGs. After repurposing them for English, I thought I should make them available for the rest of the world.

Feel free to use the badge I’ve created here, and you can also download a fully-editable EPS copy of the badge here.

Seeing as I’m a VSO volunteer in Bangladesh, if you require further tweaking of these designs for your own purposes, feel free to send me a note and I’ll see what I can do.. (mikeyleung DOT ca AT gmail DOT com).

The original source of these files resides here:
http://www.nospodemos.org.br/downloads.htm

First off, it’s been far too long since I’ve managed to write you all, and for that I must sincerely apologize. I have been extraordinarily busy with work as I’ve finally managed to find my footing as an IT volunteer in development and work is going well. I’m honestly enjoying myself more than I could have imagined I would have in Bangladesh, although the tropical heat is tiring me out a lot.

The main reason for my glee: Today I’m writing from Khagrachari, one of the most remote places in Bangladesh—if you judge by the lack of coverage in Lonely Planet’s outdated Bangladesh edition. It absolutely amazes me that this gorgeous town has yet to be researched by any guidebook writer, yet it is one of central gathering places of indigenous hill tribes people, many Bengalis and three other VSO volunteers living and working here. Finally, the scenery is fantastic and such a wonderful change from the disgusting conditions of Dhaka. Undulating hills fold and bend, making you wonder what is over the next rise and fall—definitely an explorer’s delight.

Since my arrival on April 13, I have been treated to the best Khagrachari has to offer. Biju Festival coincides with the Buddhist new year and is marked by families gathering to celebrate, eat traditional foods and drink copious amounts of homemade rice wine—Buddhist people are not so bothered with avoiding alcohol and pork (although I can tell you that many Bengalis I know enjoy their drink even more than I, which is no small feat!) The traditional task during the festival is to eat and drink your way around the neighbourhood visiting friends, work colleagues and contacts. Within the three-day holiday, I visited well over 15 houses, getting successively more full and definitely less coordinated along the way—that rice wine is strong stuff I tell you! Some of my VSO colleagues even made it to 12 houses in one day. How they made it home was another matter..

My visit wasn’t purely for pleasure, although I did choose a good time to visit. My work here has been fascinating: I’m helping to improve the capacity of two local NGOs whose work is to improve the livelihoods and education of the indigenous communities they represent. I’ve been training on basic topics like virus protection and file management, and more entertaining subjects like photography as well. My best moment so far, work wise, was conducting a workshop where the NGO workers were to decide a topic of their choice and take the photos themselves communicating their thoughts. It’s been incredibly rewarding to see the learning and then the creativity expressed, and some of the photos are gorgeous. I’m not a great facilitator, but I now find myself learning the art of presentation and public speaking while teaching local photographers to express their creative photographic vision. What more could I ask for in terms of rewarding work?

See the rest of the assignment pictures here.

On the other hand, doing IT work here is extremely challenging. The availability of electricity is the sorest problem of them all, as I’m currently typing this entry by laptop light and sweating in the dark. Power stutters on and off, with total irregularity. That also means the ceiling fans are off. Imagine the feeling of hot and sweaty frustration, and you know how I feel. People are equipped with generators here, for use when they especially need it, but fuel is costly, and the dial-up internet (yes, that’s right, 56kbps dial-up) sometimes drops out with the electricity as well (meaning that internet work on laptops is out too). For all the IT training I might throw at these NGOs, it’s all rendered useless when they don’t even have the electricity to power their computers and networks. Forget trying to get any work done on the computer. Why is the situation so bad?

First, it is the region’s remoteness that is the root cause. Unfortunately, Khagrachari also holds some of the poorest communities Bangladesh has to offer, and the indigenous communities here have already suffered great injustices at the hands of Bengali settlers. That much is common knowledge. In a remote region of the nation with already poor infrastructure, the Khag falls far down on the list of priorities. Meanwhile, the hill tracts are slowly becoming something like Tibet inside China. Things aren’t that bad yet, but because of the current political environment in Bangladesh, things are getting worse for people here.

Under the declared “state of emergency,” the government and army have been instilled with more power and authority to uproot terrorism, corruption and anything that can be classed as “being against the people’s well being.” Many civil liberties have been curtailed and media freedoms restricted, and that is hitting especially hard in a region where the human rights questions keep popping up again and again. While most of Bangladesh is quite pleased with the army’s presence, people in the hill tracts have many reasons not to feel the same way.

During my visit here, the authoritative presence has been palpable: there have been a lot of questions being asked about what we’re up to and why but since I’m a VSO volunteer the answer is easy. Most of the time, the questions are just natural curiosity, but if I return here as a guidebook writer, maybe I will be working rather quietly while I research… but thankfully I look like a local because of my Asian features and I definitely do NOT stand out as much. That’s a plus.

So.. that’s why the lack of updating. It’s the lack of electricity! When I’m back in Dhaka you’ll definitely be hearing from me again, along with the results from my photo classes!