Educating the slums

Wow! What a busy few months. July to August has been very good for fundraising following an event in Estonia at Mind Valley, so thank you all so much for your support, there are some very special and generous people out there. Your support has helped so much, to pay some debts and fix some difficult situations for the families that we support.

This month has seen many of our butterflies start a new of school or University, thankfully with good support we have been able to cover the fees. Of course, there is always more to do as we move forward such as to support the families, cover school transport and various other related costs – we are so fortunate to have some regular donors through globalizing contributing monthly towards our project, this really goes a long way each month but of course we are always om the lookout for more.

We currently have around 30 enthusiastic students in Bangladesh waiting for university or internship opportunities, so this is our next best step, and we are doing our best to help them with this.

What really stands out as we provide these opportunities of education, summer schools, internships and attending events, is how much the butterflies shine, they really blossom, growing with confidence and self-belief, we are so proud to see it. Thank you all for making it possible.

We keep on pushing, to keep a promise that we gave to children and families, which is to give them a good education.

After many years now, we are seeing some results finally, some of our early students graduating with degrees from Portugal, USA, Australia, UAE and Bangladesh, some even with master’s degrees. Thank you so much for your support to make this happen. Of course, the hard work continues.

Despite the success of our projects the issues in deprived communities and slums remain. We don’t see visible improvements yet with gender inequalities or the lack of opportunities for families considered to be low on the scales of social hierarchy in some cultures.

So, we keep fighting to bridge these gaps. It’s not getting easier; in fact, it’s getting more expensive like everything else in the world. But it is important to us that if we can provide a better future for this generation – they will in turn provide a better future for the next generation.

Besides the usual obstacles we face; the social and cultural barriers, poverty, limited access to healthcare and other well documented struggles for deprived communities, one lesser known issue is often peoples own mindsets, especially the parents or older generations who were never educated. They are led to believe that there is no good future or success for them, they don’t understand the benefit of education or see the point in changing or trying to develop. This mentality can be frustrating and hard for us to work with, causing many setbacks – but these and other difficulties are what you must accept when trying to make changes.

But we keep pushing. Our girls at school in Dubai are mostly doing very well, studying hard and developing into beautiful human beings. Although they have partial scholarships at very good schools, the remaining costs are a challenge for which we need your continued support.

The same goes for the students and families in Dhaka, with increasing living and study costs we need your support. We have also seen a lot of success helping to bring students to Dubai for internship opportunities, this way they can a save some money to help with the costs of university. We hope to continue this program if we have the funds.

So, again thank you so much for your continuous support, these projects really would not be possible without it! You are helping us to change the lives for generations to come.