We've been in Bangladesh for 9 days now, 5 more days to go. We've had a chance to see many of the projects that World Vision runs in this area. Some of them include:

- PD Hearth sessions, Positive Deviance - teaching women proper hygiene, nutrition, how to take care of their babies, etc.

- HIV/AIDS session, thankfully HIV/AIDS is not prevalent in Bangladesh but has the environment for AIDS to spread quickly. So World Vision is trying to prevent this from happening. The session that we attended was geared towards Rickshaw drivers who are in a high-risk category.

- LSBE session (Life Skill Based Education), this program educates youth about cultural practices that hinder the development of their country, i.e. dowries, polygamy, low status of women etc.

- Safe Motherhood Program, for women who are pregnant as well as for mothers with children up to 36 months. This program includes a monthly check up with a nurse and also provides midwives to those who choose to give birth at home.

- CBO/DG Forum, I don't remember what the initials stand for, but it's community based group of women who all have their own businesses and assist each other with business loans, etc.

- Village Preparedness session, This session was at a village by the Bay of Bengal, literally across the road from the beach. This location is prone to flooding every year and they have had to endure terrible cyclones. In 1991, they lost several of their villagers in one of the worst cyclones that they had ever had. The Village Preparedness session teaches Disaster Management, what to do and where to go if they know that a cyclone is coming or if their village floods.

We are holding 2 workshops over a period of 5 days for several of the WV children. One is a photography workshop and the other is an art workshop. On Friday we will be having a gallery showing at a local hotel to display all their art & photography.

World Vision Canada is still fixing some glitches in their new website before they officially go live with it, but if you would like to preview the website already, you can check it out at: https://www.mychildsponsorship.ca but please be aware that you might run into some glitches as you are surfing through the site. The community that we are in is called Patenga. If you do run into some glitches, can you email me at lilysemail@yahoo.ca and let me know what glitches you've noticed and I'll pass your message on to the IT staff so that they are aware of it. Thanks. Also, when you sign up, you are suppose to get an email with a temporary password. If you do not receive this email, please let me know and I'll have the IT guys reset your password for you. Thanks.

I've been sick the past few days, but I don't think it's anything serious. I usually get Hay Fever this time of year in Canada, and I think it's just a combination of that, and the fact that people smoke indoors in Bangladesh, which I'm allergic to, and the difference between the extreme heat outside and then the cold air conditioning inside all the buildings. I have medication with me, so hopefully by tomorrow I'll be feeling better already. I took the day off today from WV duties and am going to just hang out at the hotel. I don't want to be coughing around the children.

I'll be back in Toronto on Monday the 26th. I'm not sure how long I'll be in Toronto, probably for a week or 2 before I drive back to Thunder Bay. I left my car in Toronto.

I have started to write this post several times, but keep getting stuck on which of the amazing stories I should share with you all. I have met so many wonderful Bengali people with awesome stories over the past week. Perhaps I should start with the children. They are, after all, the reason why we are here.

I personally have sponsored a girl from the Patenga ADP, her name is Puja. I had a chance to meet her as well as the boys that my friend Vince & my friend Jacqui sponsored. I could tell you many many stories about these 3 sponsor children, but I won't.

No, I'd rather tell you about 2 other children who I was scheduled to visit. These children have been registered with World Vision, but do not have sponsors as of yet. I have promised to find sponsors for them. I had a chance to sit down with them and ask them some more questions about themselves and what they would want their future sponsors to know about them. Their answer? They wanted you to know that if you sponsored them, they would stay in school and continue their studies.

I almost started crying when I heard their sincere plea. Such a basic request that we take for granted in North America, to be able to attend school. Most children drop out of school at a very early age to go work in the garment factories for a mere 50 taka a day, That's equivalent to 75 cents Canadian, and most of them working 12-16 hrs a day/6 to 7 days a week! Most Bengali children & their families are so poor that the children are forced to work to help the family.

According to Unicef:

"In Bangladesh nearly 4.9 million children between the ages of 5 and 15 are involved in different types of work, many of them with little or no pay. Of the 301 occupations children are engaged in, 48 are categorized as hazardous. Many working children of both sexes have no access to education, with the result that they become trapped in low-skilled, low-paid work that further cements them into the cycle of poverty."

(http://www.unicef.org/bangladesh)

How can we break this cycle of poverty? It is so easy. By sponsoring a child, you are providing their family & their community everything they need to sustain themselves. Children do not need to drop out of school to go to work. They can get a good education and change their future.

Today we were visiting a community based program that assisted women who wanted to start their own businesses. This was a group started by women for women. As we were leaving, one of the mothers ran back to her house and then stopped our van as we were leaving to show us a photo of her son's sponsors back in Canada. The photo was from 2002, so her son had been a sponsor child for many years already. As she was showing us this photo, her son walked up to us as well. He was now a teenager and you could see that he was a well-educated, sophisticated young man. I could tell how proud this mother was of her son. I know without a doubt, that if it were not for the World Vision sponsorship, that family would not have been where they were today.

For $35, you can literally change lives. Can you afford it?

The little clock in the top right hand corner of my screen is telling me that it's Fri 1:01 AM April 16, that means that it's been almost a week since I left Canada. How do I put down in words everything that I've seen & experienced in the past 6 days?

When you travel, especially to far away exotic places, you hope & pray that all your travel arrangements go smoothly. The last thing that you want to happen is to be stranded in some foreign, unfamiliar country. I had barely even made it to the check-in counter at Toronto's Terminal 1, when the yarn started to unravel... Unbeknown to Donna & I (and apparently our travel agent), when you fly into Delhi and then continue on to Calcutta (Kolkata) you have to transfer from the International Terminal to the Domestic Terminal. In order to walk out the doors of the Delhi International airport you must have a visitors Visa. Without one, they will not even let you fly into Delhi, unless you have a connecting flight from the International terminal.

As we did not have this coveted Visa, we had to forfeit our lovely seats on the flight to Calcutta and instead buy all new tickets for new seats on a flight from Delhi to Dhaka (the capital of Bangladesh.) And of course, just to make things a little more complicated, our flight from Calcutta to Chittagong was suppose to be with another airline, so we were not able to purchase new tickets from Toronto. We had to fly in faith, hoping that when we got to Dhaka (after a tiresome 15 hour layover in the middle of the night in the Delhi airport), that we would be able to either exchange our Calcutta-Chittagong tickets to Dhaka-Chittagong, or at least buy new tickets for the same day. Thankfully everything ended up working out and we made it to Chittagong and only a few hours later than our original plans.

Seeing as I've fallen asleep 3 times while writing the last 3 sentences, I should probably continue this tomorrow. I'll leave you with a few images for now. Hopefully tomorrow I will have more time (& energy) to chronicle more of our adventures...stay tuned :)

TODAY!!

I have been in Toronto since Sunday already and managed to buy everything that I needed for our trip. And now today's the day!!

I will be meeting Donna (who is also from TBay) at the Toronto airport this afternoon and then our flight leaves in the early evening. First stop is Brussels, but I'm not sure if we're even getting off the plane there or not. Then we continue on to New Delhi, with a 7 hr layover there, and then to Calcutta for a few hours & then finally to Chittagong were we will meet up with the other 8 members of our team.

Today is Friday, but by the time we actually get to Bangladesh, it will be Sunday! On Monday, I will be posting the link to the new Sponsorship 2.0 website. If you are interested in helping World Vision test the new website, please let me know.

I am actually really looking forward to the heat (but not so much the humidity) of Bangladesh. The weather report for next week calls for tempratures ranging between 35-40 degrees celcius (that's over 100 farenheit!) and sunny every day. I've had enough of our cold weather, even though we did have a really mild winter this year.

Thanks for following my blog!

~Lily

Did I sleep last night? Umm...no. I left this morning around 9am to start driving to Toronto. First stop: White River. You can't drive thru White River without stopping to say hi to Winnie The Pooh!!

It's 1:47am and I'm unpacking and packing at the same time. I'm unpacking because I just moved a few days ago. I sold one house and bought another house, a bit smaller and only a few blocks away.

And I'm packing because in the morning (or maybe even in a few hours if I'm not feeling tired) I am going to drive to Toronto and then next Friday I'm flying to Bangladesh (via Brussels, New Delhi, & Calcutta)...

I can't believe the trip is only a week away! I have almost everything that I need now. I just have to get my doctor in Toronto to sign the paper saying that I'm healthy and can travel.

As a World Vision volunteer, I needed to get a police report that is kind've like a criminal record check, except it's called a "vulnerable people search" or "Vulnerable sector screening". I guess it's for people working with kids. I just barely got the report in time. I called them yesterday afternoon to ask when I could pick it up, they knew I needed it by April 1st. The lady on the phone said that they hadn't gotten to it yet as they were about 4 months backlogged!! But she said that it was in the RUSH pile and I should maybe have it next week. I told her that I was leaving the next day and she said that she'd see what she could do and that she'd call me back. At 2:40pm she called to let me know that it was done but that their office closed at 3pm. I raced over there right away to pick it up. And in case you're wondering, no, I have no criminal record :)

When I'm in Toronto, I need to go buy a Shalwar Kameeze. That's what women wear in Bangladesh. It shouldn't be too hard to find one in Toronto. I've even seen them at Value Village. Or then I'll go down to little India and buy one there. I'd love to get a bright orange one (one of my favourite colours and also the World Vision colour!)

Well, it's now 2:01am and I just yawned...hmm, I wonder if I should go to bed, or continue packing & unpacking...

~Lily