In Dr Seuss’ Children’s Books, a Commitment to Social Justice That Remains Relevant Today

On February 18, Random House announced the discovery of What Pet Should I Get?, an unpublished – and heretofore unseen – picture book by Dr Seuss. The announcement came 10 days after the same publisher revealed that it would publish Harper Lee’s “discovered” manuscript for Go Set a Watchman in the summer of 2015.

In What Pet Should I Get? – released this week – the very same siblings who first appeared in One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish now struggle with the question of what pet they should choose. 

While the siblings in What Pet Should I Get? may not be as familiar as Scout and Jem Finch, Dr Seuss’ new book is the latest addition to a body of work that remains just as committed to social justice as Harper Lee’s famous novels. 

From Flit to Horton Hears a Who!

Such matters were not always the chief focus of Theodor Geisel (Dr Seuss’ real name).

In the late 1930s, using the pen name Dr Seuss, Geisel created cockamamie ad campaigns for Flit bug spray. During the early years of World War II, he contributed notoriously vicious caricatures of the people and leaders of Axis nations for the Popular Front tabloid PM. After joining famous Hollywood director Frank Capra’s Army Signal Corps unit in 1943, he co-created propaganda films under Capra’s tutelage. 

However in the years after the war, Dr Seuss’ art underwent a radical thematic shift. With a flood of eager baby boomer readers, he decided he wanted to speak to the perspective of children. 

A Flit advertisement proof from the 1930s, drawn by Dr Seuss. Special Collection & Archives, UC San Diego Library

A Flit advertisement proof from the 1930s, drawn by Dr Seuss. Special Collection & Archives, UC San Diego Library

The racist caricatures of Japanese civilians and soldiers that Dr Seuss published in PM had drawn on the social prejudice and aggression that Geisel believed lay at the heart of adult humor. So Geisel entrusted Dr Seuss’ postwar art to the belief that children possessed a sense of fairness and justice that could transform their parents’ world. 

Geisel described his 1954 children’s book Horton Hears a Who!, in part, as an apology to the Japanese people his propaganda had demeaned during the war. In subsequent children’s books, he began addressing the major issues of the 20th century: civil rights in The Sneetches (1961), environmental protection in The Lorax (1971) and the nuclear arms race in The Butter Battle Book (1984). 

The zany wisdom of Dr Seuss

In 1960, Geisel spelled out the stakes of his art: 

In these days of tension and confusion, writers are beginning to realize that Books for Children have a greater potential for good, or evil, than any other form of literature on earth. 

Like To Kill a Mockingbird, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish was published in 1960. And like Mockingbird, the conflicts, tensions and fears of that era are highlighted (albeit indirectly). 

One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish follows a brother and sister who encounter a series of increasingly fantastic creatures. Nonsensical skits and slapstick gags disrupt the children’s need to decide on a definitive taxonomy – numbers, colors, oppositions, emotional dispositions – for these animals. 

A question nearly all children face. Random House

A question nearly all children face. Random House

The array of sorting mechanisms communicates the siblings’ attraction to different, ever-stranger living things. The book introduces more than a dozen creatures and each is outlandishly distinctive. Most importantly, the children value all of them because of their uniqueness.

Overall, this tale of inclusivity cultivated an appetite for diversity and a delight for change. It rejected the stereotypical ways of regarding persons and things through strict categorization.

Dr Seuss engaged 1960s unrest more directly in Green Eggs and Ham, also published in 1960. Using visual and verbal eloquence, Dr Seuss forces the the adult, Grinch-looking creature to confront his stubborn prejudice against green eggs and ham: the character is presented with a series of challenging questions designed to expose the absence of any foundation for his bias.

The adult remains stubborn in his intolerance until his much younger counterpart convinces him that there’s no more basis for his distaste for green eggs and ham than the dislike he’s taken to Sam-I-Am. 

The 650 million children who have read Dr Seuss’ books have been exposed to new ways of viewing the world, of rethinking a social order often imbued in prejudice. But adults continue to use the themes of One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish. It has inspired a CEO’s leadership manual, a Barnes & Noble e-readerand the name of a dating website. The book was quoted by Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan in a dissenting opinion earlier this year. 

In 1994, Johnny Valentine and Melody Sarecky even applied it to promote same-sex marriage in their children’s book One Dad, Two Dads, Brown Dad, Blue Dads. 

An original sketch from What Pet Should I Get? discovered in Dr Seuss’ home office in La Jolla, California. Dr Seuss Enterprises

The pet shop that provides the setting for What Pet Should I Get? is inhabited by creatures that display striking resemblances to Horton, the Whos and the Sneetches, along with Sam-I-Am and the fish protagonists of One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish. An offshoot of the social vision informing these narratives, What Pet Should I Get? won’t disappoint Dr. Seuss’ readers in the way the Atticus Finch disappointed some To Kill a Mockingbird fans. 

As older readers relive their response to a universal question nearly all children face, What Pet Should I Get? will allow a new generation of readers to discover why Dr Seuss remains forever relevant.

Donald E Pease is a Professor of English, Dartmouth College

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE CONVERSATION

Without School, A ‘Lost Generation’ of Rohingya Refugee Children Face Uncertain Future

The boy’s eyes lit up when he talked about his dream of becoming a doctor.

Seven-year-old “Mohammad” – not his real name – is a Rohingya Muslim from Myanmar. I met him at a learning center at a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, in early July 2019.

After sharing his aspirations, Mohammed quickly remembered reality.

“I know my dreams will never come true,” he said with a faint smile.

Refugee crisis of global proportions

Mohammed is among the more than 700,000 Rohingya who have taken refuge in Bangladesh after an ethnic cleansing campaign of rape, killing and torture by the Myanmar military in mid-2017. They joined the more than 200,000 Rohingyas who had previously fled Myanmar’s brutal efforts to rid the Buddhist-majority country of this marginalized Muslim minority.

Of the newly arrived Rohingya, three-quarters are women and children, according to the United Nations.

In a noteworthy humanitarian gesture, the Bangladeshi government has given refuge to these persecuted people. Aided by Bangladeshi community organizations, various UN agencies and other international donors, the Rohingya have been receiving shelter, food, clothes and basic health care since the massive exodus in 2017.

This essential care, which cost an estimated US$920.5 million in 2019 represents a gargantuan global effort. Still, the resources are woefully inadequate.

Most Bangladeshi refugee camps are overcrowded and, as a result, unhygienic. Residents survive on the absolute bare minimum of nutrition and other necessities. Monsoon rain, cold and landslides are everyday threats for these Rohingya, as I’ve witnessed firsthand during my visits to Bangladeshi camps in 2017 and 2019.

It is a dismal existence for all. But it is the plight of the roughly 500,000 Rohingya children living in limbo that strikes me as bleakest.

Concerns of a lost generation

Research shows that future of refugee children grows more imperiled the longer they remain out of school.

In many countries that host substantial refugee populations, including Turkey, Lebanon and Uganda, the United Nation’s refugee agency and the United Nations Children’s Fund ensure children receive a quality, full-time education, either at the camps or in nearby public schools.

Even so, just 23% refugee children worldwide are enrolled in secondary school, according to the UN’s High Commission on Human Rights. Just 1% attend university.

Because Bangladeshi authorities have not granted the Rohingya official refugee status and consider them instead “forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals,” the roughly 500,000 Rohingya children in the country have no access to a formal education. Rohingya children are not permitted to attend Bangladeshi public schools.

The United Nations Children’s Fund and its partners offer Rohingya refugees aged 4 to 14 two-hour daily lessons on Burmese, English, math and life skills at about 1,600 learning centers located at the camps. These classes keep about 145,000 Rohingya children – or about 30% of the Rohingya youngsters in Bangladesh – occupied for part of the day but do not provide the kind of formal education that will allow the children to work toward a high school degree and enter the job market.

The camps offer no schooling at all for Rohingya refugee adolescents aged 15 to 18.

English-language exercise books at a UNICEF-supported ‘learning center’ at one of the Kutupalong refugee camps in Bangladesh. Rubayat Jesmin, Author provided

Some teenagers, mostly boys, have turned to madrassas, or Islamic learning centers, where they can receive a religious education.

The remaining Rohingya children who attend neither UNICEF classes nor madrassas are simply left to fill their own day. At the Rohingya camps, I saw boys working in shops, playing cards or sitting idle at all hours of the day.

When I asked Mohammad what he does when he is not in school, he told me that he “takes care of his family.”

“I play with the other kids, too,” he added with a grin.

Adolescent girls, I learned, are often kept at home by their parents because of the Rohingya’s conservative social and religious norms.

The camps can also be dangerous for girls. Human traffickers have been known to target young Rohingya women, promising them jobs outside the camps. Girls face other forms of violence and human rights abuse at Bangladesh’s camps, too, including child marriage.

Bangladeshi camps for the Rogingyas are typically overcrowded, unhygienic, muddy and prone to landslides. Rubayat Jesmin, Author provided

Rohingya repatriation

Growing up in unstable conditions, with no possibility of study, Rohingya children like Mohammed are at risk of becoming a lost generation.

Their limbo may not last forever. In response to heightened international pressure, Myanmar in November 2017 agreed to take the Rohingyas back starting November 2018.

However, their return was postponed due to protests by the refugees, who feared conditions in Myanmar was not yet safe. The United Nations and other international refugee services have also voiced concern about sending the Rohingya back, saying there was no indication that the Myanmar government had punished the people responsible for the crimes in Rahkine state, nor agreed to give the Rohingya citizenship.

Considered foreigners in both Myanmar, their native country, and Bangladesh, where they’ve sought refuge, the Rohingya Muslims are the world’s largest stateless people.

While the negotiations for their repatriation continue, a generation of traumatized Rohingya children wait for their futures to begin.

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RUBAYAT JESMIN is a Doctoral Student at the College of Community and Public Affairs, Binghamton University, State University of New York.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE CONVERSATION

The Earth Group Aims to Change the World Through Education and Nourishment

Newly Certified B Corp Collaborates with UN World Food Programme to Help Children Around the Globe.

Kori Chilibeck and Matt Moreau at work for The Earth Group and World Food Programme in Sri Lanka. “Becoming a B Corp is an affirmation of what we’ve worked to achieve for so many years.”

The Earth Group is a Certified B Corporation that supports the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) through donations that provide school meals, drinking water and education to children in the most troubled areas of our world.

To date, The Earth Group has helped fund more than 3.6 million meals to young school kids while helping them get an education in places like Tajikistan, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Bolivia and the Philippines. The B Corp is dedicated to informing consumers everywhere about the power of their everyday marketplace choices. For example, the simple purchase of a bag of Earth Coffee, one of three consumer products sold by the company, provides a schoolchild with meals for an entire week.

Purchase one bag of Earth Coffee online or in-store to feed one child for one entire week.

When Earth Group founders Matt Moreau and Kori Chilibeck met as fellow employees of a ski shop near the Rocky Mountains 14 years ago, they likely never imagined what lay ahead for them as individuals, new business owners or as proud supporters of the WFP.

Just forging this critical relationship with the WFP seemed daunting enough, but the maze-like process took far longer to realize than anyone could imagine. Eventually, they launched their social enterprise onto the large and complex world stage of fighting hunger, providing clean drinking water and building schools for children where none existed before.

It was at this point that Moreau and Chilibeck realized the real work had begun in earnest for their Canadian B Corp based in Edmonton, Alberta. Seeking to confirm that the aid they worked so diligently to fund would actually make the journey to the end-users, they traveled to Sri Lanka, Bolivia, Tajikistan and the Philippines to see for themselves.

As the photos and videos produced from these expeditions clearly testify, Moreau and Chilibeck landed in their natural element, surrounded by the children and co-workers they had been working so hard to support since creating The Earth Group. The expressions on the faces of not only the children and teachers but of Moreau and Chilibeck and the WFP country managers tell a tale of unselfish dedication.

Kori Chilibeck in Sri Lanka hosted by the UN World Food Programme.

Seeing the Progress

The Earth Group maps its path to success through respect for the cultures they are trying to help. In many of these destinations, it is still frowned upon for female children to attend school. By respecting that posture yet also using the intellectual tools at hand, the company funds projects that often furnish female students with an extra helping of food to take home if they attend school, thereby allowing them to obtain an education, the family to benefit from the food, and the attitudes about females attending school to soften.

Schoolyard antics in Sri Lanka with Matt Moreau and Kori Chilibeck of The Earth Group.

The exhilaration of such remote expeditions reached its peak when the duo traveled to the Philippines, arriving in a volatile region where insurgents had blasted grenades and explosives just the day before. Their in-country WFP handlers changed safety tactics at once, and what was scheduled to be a multi-day trip ended up being a shortened-but-packed day of visiting the children in their classes, touring the school facilities, meeting the support staff and then continuing safely out of this troubled zone.

Back home in Edmonton, Moreau and Chilibeck rolled up their sleeves and focused on making their simple products-with-impact list: Fair Trade coffee from Eastern Africa, Indonesia, Central and South America; glacier-sourced drinking water from Whistler, British Columbia, and Rocky Mountain House, Alberta; and organic Alberta-grown teas, available in as many outlets as possible across Canada and around the world. Their online sales are activewith their triple bottom line—people, planet, profit—always remains in focus.

The Earth Group obtains its drinking water from Canadian glacier spring sources near the communities of Rocky Mountain House and Whistler, and their low-weight recyclable plastic bottles are landfill biodegradable. The Earth Group is also partnered with and supports Plastic Bank efforts to reduce ocean plastic.

Paying their dues during long negotiations with large corporations, Moreau and Chilibeck have now succeeded in signing major chain stores in Canada such as IKEA, Safeway, Sobeys, Whole Foods, Save On Foods, IGA and Metro. They also launched their product line in Japan, another major feat for any business run by two people, one employee and a group of dedicated volunteers.

Chilibeck is just back from the unrivaled adventure of presenting The Earth Group products in Japan to the largest food and beverage show in Asia called FOODEX. A receptive audience was excited to hear Earth Water is already available in their marketplace, with more Earth Group products sure to follow.

Path to Success

During certification in 2018 as a B Corporation, B Lab’s independent Standards Advisory Council confirmed The Earth Group’s three essentials: 1) social and environmental performance, 2) transparency and 3) accountability.

“B Corps values are synonymous with ours and embedded in our culture, so working toward the certification was both a pleasure and a reminder of being mindful of the numerous ways in which our work affects people and planet.”

And so it goes for these two young Canadian entrepreneurs and their “overnight success,” which has only taken them 14 years of collaboration, dedication, no-pay and near bankruptcy to arrive at a point where they can now see the results of their work. Having the blessings of understanding spouses has made it all possible, plus a bit of luck at critical moments.

Business gurus will tell start-up entrepreneurs timing is everything, and while this adage does have merit, the hard work and determination to succeed cannot be underestimated.

When Moreau and Chilibeck hatched their road map to success in a ski shop near the Rocky Mountains 14 years ago to create The Earth Group, at the same time Ben Cohen and Mal Warwick’s book Values-Driven Business: How to Change the World, Make Money, and Have Fun was synthesizing best practices and socially responsible business goals and laying the foundation for what would become the first B Impact Assessment, a process still used to certify B Corps.

B the Change gathers and shares the voices from within the movement of people using business as a force for good and the community of Certified B Corporations. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the nonprofit B Lab.

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GREGORY B. GALLAGHER is a Writer, Filmmaker, Musician and Producer.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON MEDIUM

Fighting to End Child Marriage in Lebanon

Ghassan Idriss knows firsthand the harmful effects of child marriage on society. Having married at a young age to a woman even younger than himself, Idriss and his wife faced struggles that so many other couples in his home country of Lebanon grapple with. Now, with three daughters of his own, Idriss is doing everything he can to educate those around him about the dangers of this antiquated institution. By hosting talks, he’s using his voice to spark change within his community.

Child Slavery in Ghana

Thousands of children like Godson, Gideon and Foli* in Ghana live in slavery on Lake Volta, working up to 18 hours a day in the fishing industry. For these young children, the only way out of slavery is to drown or be rescued. The International Justice Mission (IJM) is finding these boys, bringing them to safety and arresting the cruel boat masters who abuse them.

GHANA: Child Slavery

One small boy. One huge lake. Foli was a slave. Immerse yourself in his story.

Thousands of children between the ages of 6 and 18 live in slavery on Lake Volta, working up to 18 hours a day in the fishing industry. For these young children, the only way out of slavery is to drown or be rescued. Children just like Foli.* Visit ijm.org/foli to send rescue today.

Kyrgyzstan: Migrant Women Workers and a ‘Lost Generation’ of Children

Dilya-eje, a secondary school teacher in the border village of Samarkandek, Kyrgyzstan, often visits the houses of her neighbourhood to record the children who should attend school the next year. She always indicates the status of their parents in her notebook. More than half of the parents are labelled as migrants.

When men migrate, women take on the usual male roles: today most agricultural labour in the villages is done by women. But in Kyrgyzstan there are also a high number of women migrants. In 2016, women accounted for about 40% of total Kyrgyz labour migrants to Russia. Some are divorced or married women and some are very young girls who begin to earn money just after graduating from high school. Women migrating to Russia are usually employed in the service sector.

Because of these trends, traditional notions of femininity and masculinity are now often in conflict. Despite the fact that these women are sometimes the main source of income in their families, they have to face misogynistic behaviour – and violence.

‘A real woman is willing do housekeeping’

Labour migration is always accompanied by a dichotomy between economic benefits and social consequences.

According to a 2016 United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) survey in Kyrgyzstan, migrant women face deep contempt when returning home.

Among 6,000 households interviewed, it was found that more than half of respondents (51% of women and 61% of men) believe that a “wife’s career is less important than the career of her husband”. Meanwhile, 43% of men and 38% of women felt that a “woman’s work has negative impact on family and children”. Most respondents agreed that “a real woman is willing do housekeeping - it is a pleasure for her”.

Women returning from labour migration also face problems of reintegration into the family and alienation of children. At the same time, studies have shown that remittances home are mostly spent on regular consumption, such as food, medicines and clothes. Large amounts of savings go towards buying the likes of homes or cars.

It is difficult to trace what part of the remittances are made by migrant women, but it should be noted that migrants from Kyrgyzstan transferred an average annual amount of a third of the country’s GDPbetween 2012 and 2014.

Independence and experience

Despite the negative public attitude to women’s labour migration, it helps many women to gain financial independence and gain experience of making their own choices of partner, budget, and investments which they could not do in traditional rural patriarchal communities from which they mostly come. Labour migration also remains the most accessible way of socialisation for them.

Migration transforms gender relations in modern Kyrgyz society, in which the Soviet emancipation of women, the renaissance of Islam and capitalism compete in forming a new national identity.

Today, such changes are perceived as a threat by many Kyrgyz men, some of whom turn to violence. This new environment has allowed the emergence of nationalistic Kyrgyz male groups called “Patriots”, who form “moral police” to pursue Kyrgyz women who lead what they regard as an immoral lifestyle in Russia.

According to the UNFPA survey, such actions are supported by a majority of the Kyrgyz population:

over half of the respondents support the work of nationalist organisations … stripping, raping them [the migrant women] and uploading their photos and ‘punishment’ videos for bad behaviour. At the same time, 22% of women and 26% of men do not consider it immoral for a man to create a new family in migration, if he continuously takes care of the first family left behind in his country of origin.

Criticism was only concentrated in the circle of the liberal minority.

“What the girls are blamed for is the result of poverty and marginalisation. But no one has the right to give a moral assessment of their behaviour. If these guys were real patriots, then they would … help them find jobs, look for housing”, claimed Nurgul Asylbekova, an United Nations Development Programme representative.

Beyond attacks, the underlining issue is a public conflict about what a Kyrgyz woman should be, and what it means to be a Kyrgyz man. It reveals a deep fracture in Kyrzgyz society.

Hostages of a patriarchal culture

The country as a whole has a high level of violence against women: nearly one-third of women and girls, age 15-49 face violence. In this context, violence against migrant women does not seem to be anything outrageous.

Husbands of migrant women are also hostages of patriarchal Kyrgyz culture. Childcare and household management lowers their social status in society. They also, experience pressure in their communities. As a result, public condemnation mixed with physical separation often leads to the disintegration of the women’s families.

Despite the fact that there are more than 15,000 registered NGOs in a country of six million people, none specifically addresses the problems faced by migrant women. Most migrant women who return home need employment, psychological aid and medical care.

It is obvious that female migration in Kyrgyzstan is not a temporary phenomenon. The teacher, Dilya-eje, uses her own definition for migrant children: “a lost generation”. Such a definition does not exist in the language of the government, international organisations and NGOs in Kyrgyzstan. Women’s migration is still an invisible phenomena. Yet an open public debate is needed to address the new gender order and the deep societal changes that are fostered by migration.

This article was originally published by The Conversation.

ASEL MURZAKULOVA

Asel Murzakulova is a Senior Research Fellow at the Mountain Societies Research Institute of the University of Central Asia. 

The Furnace of Broken Dreams

On the outskirts of Dhaka you will find hundreds of small brick factories.

The majority of these factories are considered illegal by the Bangladeshi government because the chimney stacks are too low and because they still use coal as their main fuel. Burning wood in kilns has also been illegal since 1989, but nearly two million tons of firewood are burned in ovens annually. The toxic fumes that these countless factory sites emit cause almost half of all the air pollution in the city.

Beside each factory are the makeshift villages or camps, where the workers live. Whole families are forced to labour for twelve hours a day, without rights and with a salary that barely allows them to survive.

The workers rise before dawn, heading up to the furnace in the half darkness. At 9 o’clock they are permitted to take a half hour break from their work. Most return quickly to their homes, wake up their youngest children who still are sleeping, and prepare breakfast for their families.

It is then back to work until 2 o’clock, when they may take another half hour break for lunch. Below you see Imran Uddin, 24 years old, a few minutes before a tropical storm hit the factory site where he was working with his brothers. None of the workers stopped during the storm.

Most of the workers in the furnace are families, including the elderly and also their children, who will begin to work alongside their parents when they are around six years old. The children’s pay is equal to that of adults, and is based on the amount of bricks transported daily. Younger children will spend the day wandering in the camps or around the furnace.

The work day only ends as darkness falls, when the workers will head to the nearest lake or river to wash the grime and dust from their faces and clothes. Returning to their homes, they prepare dinner and fall into an exhausted sleep. It is very rare for a home to have electricity. I was surprised to find that their days were marked only by the rhythm of work, no time even for prayer. They work six and a half days each week.

Most of the workers who we talked with were friendly, despite their fatigue and tiredness, and were glad to speak with someone. They also offered us their hospitality, as best they could, even though some of them told us that they felt ashamed of the conditions they lived in.

Sometimes we spoke with someone who was fearful. Some of the workers were afraid that if the boss knew they had talked to us, they might lose their job. In general, the workers were preoccupied with maintaining a relentless pace of bricks being loaded onto their heads or into the carts.

One of the young men we met, Shakir Kander, was 16 years old. Day in, day out, Shakir shovelled the dusty coal to fuel the hungry brick-baking furnace, from six o’clock in the morning until nightfall.

As with all the other workers, Shakir is allowed only half a day of rest each week. Also below you see a boatman crossing the Bouriganga river, which is considered among the top three most polluted rivers in the world. The many waterways surrounding Dhaka are essential for the transport of materials that are be used in the manufacture of bricks.

Above you see Shamina, thirteen years old, sleeping on the back of her bicycle — used for transporting bricks — during her short lunch break. During my time in Bangladesh, I visited perhaps thirty factories in two months, and met many individuals like Shamina. When embarking on this project, I believed that it was crucial to spend several days at each factory, so that I might more thoroughly capture their moments of everyday life outside of work. Sadly, factory after factory, it became apparent that the daily free time I had imagined for the workers, simply did not exist. Their schedule did not even permit them time to pray before sunrise, and days seemed to pass with an ineluctable cyclicality.

The sun beat down from above, the sweltering furnaces were burned constantly, and the air was always filled with dust and smoke.

I went away upset, with a bitter taste in my mouth. Away from these hellish workplaces, I gratefully breathed great gulps of fresh air, and yet the fate of the workers and their children would remain unchanged.

It was after reading author Kevin Bales’ powerful works on modern slavery and other similar studies, that I felt compelled to move to Bangladesh to tell this story. When I first arrived into Dhaka’s industrial area, and saw the forest of factory chimneys engulfed by thick black smoke, I knew that I had made the right decision. I had to document this. I had to share it with as many people as I could. And so I began.

In the end, what has stayed with me most about these factories, is our remarkable human capacity to somehow find the will to adapt and survive in adverse circumstances, whether environmental, social or economic. Living alongside the workers was, in its own way, a privilege, as I tried to understand and document the depth and truth of their lives.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON MAPTIA.

RAFFAELE PETRALLA

Raffaele is a documentary photographer focusing on social, environmental, and anthropological issues.

#HatchKids Discuss Microaggressions

SheKnows Media's Hatch program creates KidsSpeak content for grown-ups, made by kids on a mission. This workshop's mission was to educate parents on the concept of "microaggressions," defined as a form of unintentional discrimination, and their impact on teens' self-esteem. SheKnows Media's Hatch program creates KidsSpeak content for grown-ups, made by kids on a mission. For more information, visit – http://corporate.sheknows.com/hatch

Voluntourism: What could go wrong when trying to do right?

Voluntourism: What could go wrong when trying to do right?

During the past eight years, as I have joined and then lead volunteer programs in Asia, I have seen many of the same mistakes repeated when it comes to international “voluntourism”, I have made many of these mistakes myself. I know how easy it is to offer a trip that is easy to sell, fits in with travelers’ demands, appears to have a plan for a positive impact, but in the end ends up being either a waste of time for the local community partners or, in the worst cases, causes more harm than good. Here are some of the common problems I have seen in the voluntourism market and some tips for travelers on how to choose the right program.

Creating one-off projects which have little long-term impact

Often times the real needs of a project are not things that volunteers can easily support. Language barriers, lack of local knowledge, and lack of skills prevent volunteers from being a good fit for most development project needs, so instead tour companies often create projects for the volunteer.

These projects typically involve little investment of energy and ideas in people. The core needs of the partner might have been teacher training for their school, soil enhancement techniques to improve farming, etc. Because volunteers can’t help with those things, a project is instead created to fill the desire of the traveler to “feel helpful”, and the core needs are overlooked for those where it was simpler to insert unskilled volunteers. These projects might be building a fence or painting a school, and it is likely that the tour company will do little to monitor the project other than stopping by twice a year with their tourists to take a picture of “the school they are helping.”

Real life example: I really did travel with a tour company that decided to allow us to paint the school that was on their bike route. We painted it poorly, I must say, as we rushed to complete it in one day (and most of us felt too tired to put in a big effort). We probably spent $200 on paint (25% of which we dropped on the floor). The project was in rural Thailand, and $200 could have probably bought a lot of educational resources, hired a few teachers for a month, or done a list of other things which would have added more educational value than our patchy blue paint job. If they insisted on painting, if they had instead funded $3000 towards a locally identified educational need (for example, a weekly life-skills training course), plus bought $200 worth of paint, at least then our combined efforts would have been more than just the blue paint on the floor.

How to choose: Ask the tour operator about their relationship with the NGO partner. Have they worked together long? If the answer is yes, that’s a good thing. How do they choose what projects the travelers will engage in? If the local communities or NGO partners are making the decisions and have veto power over ideas they don’t like, that is better than ideas coming from the tour company based on unfounded assumptions of needs. For all of these answers, getting in touch with both someone who had gone on the trip before and someone working in the country where you are visiting to get their perspective on the company and NGO partner will shine a more realistic light on the situation.

Forgetting that volunteers are NOT free

A lot of tour operators will bring their clients to a project and expect an NGO or community program to entertain their guests by speaking to them about their work or organizing a small volunteer project. They put the NGOs or orphanages on their site, sell them to clients as part of a tour, yet keep all of the tour profits themselves. Sometimes the tour company says, “We leave it up to the tourists to see if they want to donate!”, but it should not be the tourists’ responsibility to ensure that the development partner gets value out of the trip in exchange for their time.

Real life example: As an NGO, at PEPY we sometimes get requests from tour companies to come see our projects. They want to include a visit to our programs as a part of their tour, which they will market to their clients. To entertain a group for a few hours and explain our projects would take time away from management staff.

How to choose: If you know that your skills are not precisely matched with the needs of a project, or if the interactions you are having with partner NGOs are taking their time away from their core mission, ask and find out if the tour company is compensating the person or group presenting to or facilitating your community interaction.  If they are not, yet the tour company is marking this part of the experience as a selling point of the tour, then they are probably putting the desire for their own profits over a the need to provide real support for these groups.

Giving things away

As Saundra has told us over and over again and as I have learned through seeing the negative effects of an unbridled tourism culture of giving things away “to the poor people”, giving things to people is never going to solve their problems. Instead, it can destroy local markets, create community jealousies, and create a culture of dependency.

Real life example: I wish this WASN’T real… but sadly, this is what a lot of “responsible” tourism has come to. There are tour operators in Cambodia where you can pay $45 for the day to be driven out to a “poor village where you can hand out food or school supplies to the poor family of your choice”. Oh yes, people pay for this. It’s like buying food pellets at the zoo to feed the goats. Except these are people. Not goats.

How to choose: Question any organization that allows you and your tour group to go anywhere to “hand out school supplies” or “deliver a book to a child”. If those items are needed, they should be distributed through local power structures, in ways where those with the highest needs are prioritized, and where capacity building is tied in with the giving away of things.

Monitoring projects poorly or not at all

How can a tour company that comes through an area a few times a year know that they are “improving lives through our wells”? Do they go back and test them? Fix them? Get feedback? Sometimes we think we are helping people, but it is not until we try it and fail that we realize our plan was flawed. What is worse is if we continue to repeat our failures, either from lack of willingness to admit them, or lack of effort to research our impacts.

Real life example: A tour company in India allowed tourists to hand out goats to families on their tours. In the middle of the tour, a person from a nearby village came and told the director that the man who had been put in charge of choosing which poor families should get the goats had been charging the families for the goats for years. The tour company had been making their English speaking tour guide rich, were not helping “the poorest of the poor” that they claimed to be, and had furthered corruption and mistrust in the village.

How to choose: Ask about the NGO’s monitoring plan. If you are building any structures or giving away any technology, find out how those things are being put to use and who will monitor the needs in case of damage or additional ideas for improvements. Is there a responsible NGO partner involved in these projects full-time who can make the changes needed to ensure the program’s success? If you feel that the tour company’s projects are one-off initiatives with little relationship building on their part with the community, find a new operator.

Giving unskilled volunteers jobs that require skills

Even painting requires some skills, and clearly our group in Thailand didn’t have them. Teaching English should not be left to 19 year old gap years, especially in countries where there are plenty of unemployed local English speakers. If we don’t know how to do what we are supposed to be doing as volunteers, we might cause more harm than good, and at minimum, we will waste a lot of people’s time.

Real life example: There are many orphanages in Cambodia which take volunteers to teach English. Some come for a few weeks, others for a few days. When they leave, the classes have no teacher, there is no curriculum to ensure that the students aren’t learning “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” every day, and the school is not better able to solve its own problems in the future because of the volunteer’s visit. If skilled teachers had spent time teaching English teachers English, they would have improved the system at least slightly, but sadly, everyone just wants to pet the cute kids.

How to choose: If you are looking for a long term placement, make sure to pick an operator that does very thorough matching of skills and needs. For short term placements, choose groups focused on educating you as a traveler, and giving you the skills and tools to improve the world when you go home. We have to learn before we can help. Choosing a trip focused on your education, which doesn’t assume that every wealthy traveler has construction skills, will empower you to be better equipped to support responsible initiatives in the future.

Forgetting to make the rest of the time on their trip “responsible”

There is a lot of discussion about the “volunteer time”, but what about the rest of the trip? Where are you being put up? What restaurants are you eating at? Those things matter just as much as the volunteer time, and just like carbon offsetting, if you are trying to do good by giving money to development projects, yet causing harm in all of your day-to-day activities, the two do not balance out.

Real life example: A responsible tourism organization based abroad was planning their trip to Cambodia and had contacted us to learn more about our work. When I met with the trip coordinator at their hotel, I realized that they had chosen to stay at a hotel owned in part by a very well known corrupt politician. Had they spent the time to ask anyone working in responsible travel in Cambodia about their hotel and restaurant choices, they would have found much more well-respected places in which to spend their money.

How to choose: Ask your voluntourism partner about the rest of the trip and how they make their choices. If they outsource their entire trip to a partner or if they are selling trips in tens of countries around the world, they likely do not know the people and places they are visiting well, and are less likely to be offering you a chance to have a positive impact with your tourism dollars.

Fostering moral imperialism

This one is the biggest problem I think, but the least talked about. We assume, because we come from wealthier places with better education systems, that we can come into any new place without knowing much about the culture or the people, and we can fix things. We can’t! THEY, the people who live there and know the place well, can. Our job in the development world can and should be to support them in doing so. So, we can’t assume we can come do it for them and “save the babies” by visiting an orphanage for a few hours on our trip to India. And we sure shouldn’t think that our time is oh so valuable that we should fundraise money to pay for OUR flights to go paint a school poorly. My job, in running a tour operation, is to educate travelers on at least these two points: improvements take time, and the people we are visiting have just as much—if not more—to teach us as we have to teach them.

Real life example: Just search for voluntourism on the web. “Come to XXXXX, Africa and save the world,” followed by instructions on how to fundraise tax free dollars, which include the price of your travel abroad.

How to choose: If we are going to send our students abroad without charging them, we should at least tell them the truth: THEY are the ones benefiting in this situation. Let’s start being realistic and not deciding to go abroad to help, but instead to learn. If you find a company that discusses the trip as “life-changing” for the communities you are visiting, scroll further until you find one that admits that the real selling point is that the experience will be life-changing for YOU. That is OK! That is why we travel, so let’s not try to hide that. If your tour company talks about all of their successes at helping people, but will not give you examples of times they have made mistakes, lessons they have learned, or things they are doing differently now compared with three years ago, don’t trust them. They clearly think that just because they are setting out to do good, that they are. Remind them that Good Intentions are NOT Enough.

It’s time to stop making the same mistakes

Now that enough of us have made these mistakes and learned from them, it is time for others to stop making the same mistakes. To make the overall impact of volunteer travel more positive will take a movement of travelers demanding responsible practices from their operators. Please add comments or tips for travelers which you think might give them additional ideas for picking the best organized voluntourism programs.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON LESSONS I LEARNED.

DANIELA PAPI

Daniela is the Deputy Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship. She has spearheaded student programming initiatives at Saïd Business School including the Leading for Impact programme and had taught on MBA courses including the Entrepreneurship Project and a course on high-impact entrepreneurship. Daniela is a graduate of Saïd Business School's MBA programme and was a Skoll Scholarship recipient. 

Prior to coming to Oxford, Daniela spent six years in Cambodia where she grew a youth leadership organization, PEPY, an educational travel company, PEPY Tours, and an advocacy organisation, Learning Service. Daniela is co-authoring a book advocating for a 'Learning Service' approach to philanthropic and volunteer travel and has worked as a consultant to other social impact organizations, typically supporting their strategy redesign by incorporating her experience in social marketing and user-centered programme design. She recently wrote a report called 'Tackling Heropreneurship' focused on fuelling collective impact through an 'apprenticing with a problem' approach.

Check out Learning Service for more.

DANIELA PAPI

Daniela is the Deputy Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship. She has spearheaded student programming initiatives at Saïd Business School including the Leading for Impact programme and had taught on MBA courses including the Entrepreneurship Project and a course on high-impact entrepreneurship. Daniela is a graduate of Saïd Business School's MBA programme and was a Skoll Scholarship recipient. 

Prior to coming to Oxford, Daniela spent six years in Cambodia where she grew a youth leadership organization, PEPY, an educational travel company, PEPY Tours, and an advocacy organisation, Learning Service. Daniela is co-authoring a book advocating for a 'Learning Service' approach to philanthropic and volunteer travel and has worked as a consultant to other social impact organizations, typically supporting their strategy redesign by incorporating her experience in social marketing and user-centered programme design. She recently wrote a report called 'Tackling Heropreneurship' focused on fuelling collective impact through an 'apprenticing with a problem' approach.

Check out Learning Service for more.

Together: Ending Child Marriage in Zambia

Mirriam is a 17-year-old who, like any other teenager, has ambitions and dreams. She wants to become a doctor. However, where Mirriam lives, child marriage and poverty threaten her chances of getting the education she needs and the future she dreams of. 

Together: Ending Child Marriage in Zambia is a short documentary that asks what can be done to enable girls like Mirriam to avoid child marriage and fulfil their potential?

It tells the story of partnership, of how civil society activists, girls, traditional leaders, and the government are coming together to make sure that no girl is married as a child. 

If a movement can gain momentum in a country where rates of early marriage are among the highest in the world, then perhaps we can pave the way for change not only in Zambia but far beyond.

Together: Ending Child Marriage in Zambia shows how by working in partnership we can put an end to child marriage in one generation, and ensure that every girl, like Mirriam, can have a bright future.

This film features the work of Girls Not Brides members in Zambia including the Forum for African Women Educationalists Zambia (FAWEZA), Population Council and YWCA Zambia.
 

Orphanage Volunteering’s Shocking Link to Child Abuse

I never thought that playing catch with a kid could be a bad thing, or that goofing off could contribute to long-term psychological damage. Even now, as I write it, it all seems a little absurd. Is it really possible that making kids laugh could do permanent harm?

Every year, millions of people travel around the world to volunteer. Orphanages are one of the most popular destinations, and it makes sense. Many volunteers like working with children, often because children are enthusiastic and working with them is very active and “hands on.” Most of the tasks volunteers are given when working with kids are simple, and it is rare that volunteers are expected to have any specialized skills or to participate in any in-depth training before starting their volunteer work.

At the same time, orphanages are often understaffed and poorly kept up. Operating with limited resources (or under the appearance of limited resources), they are frequently on the lookout for people who are willing to pay to work. Placement companies and organizations provide orphanages with paying volunteers to help with childcare, teaching, cooking, and maintenance. Volunteers are told that they’ll be providing orphaned children with a more nurturing environment while orphanages get a steady income and a constant flow of helping hands.

All of this sounds fine and dandy, but the problem with orphanage volunteer work isn’t in the volunteer’s desire to help, but in the very existence and implementation of orphanages themselves.

Not many would-be volunteers realize that more than 80% of children who are labeled as “orphans” have a surviving parent. Even fewer understand that the traditional kinship structures of many non-western countries, especially those where orphanage volunteering is most common, actually result in very few children being left without someone to care for them (Richter and Norman, 2010; UNAIDS/UNICEF/USAID, 2004).

Which begs the question: why are there so many kids in orphanages?

There are orphans that need a home, and sometimes that means that they have to go into group care, but for many of the children who are labeled as orphans and blazoned across brochures, it’s poverty, not a loss of family, that put them there. Desperation will make people do unthinkable things, especially with the promise of ample food, a solid education, and a comfortable bed. Because of this, all around the world caregivers are willingly giving up their children to orphanages. Sometimes, they even get cash in return. This isn’t altruism on the orphanages part, it’s well-disguised human trafficking.

None of this is the volunteer’s fault, but just by working at orphanages, volunteers are contributing to the problem and, inadvertently, may be supporting the exploitation and traumatization of children - the opposite of what their goal was in going to volunteer in the first place.

Once the volunteer arrives at the orphanage, they might get a feeling that something is off, but it’s easy to push that feeling away when there are kids who genuinely do need help regardless of how they got there. The do need attention and love, they do need teachers and caregivers, and when they get those things children, especially young children, are often overwhelming grateful. It’s hard to walk away, and it’s easy to ignore the problems when there’s a kid on your lap, a kid on your back, and another looking for a place to grab onto.

While the industry is definitely shockingly corrupt, there are many orphanages and children’s homes that truly believe that they are acting in their ward’s best interests and are committed to putting the child’s, not the paying visitor’s, needs first. The way children get into an orphanage, and the ongoing exploitation of them once they have arrived, are part of a systemic problem that may not apply to every orphanage. However, there are also more personal impacts of short-term volunteering, relevant across the entire industry, that may be just as harmful.

Three key aspects of child development that most people can agree on are:

1. Children benefit from long-term relationships with adult figures.
2. Those adults don’t have to be a family member in the traditional sense, but having a stable familial atmosphere promotes positive development.
3. Children without stable relationships with adults often suffer from psychological and behavioral issues that are directly related to a lack of stability and guidance early in life.

All three of these are proven concepts that apply around the world from Cambodian orphanages to the American foster care system. Orphanages that rely heavily on free or paying volunteer labor and, as a result, tend to have only a small local staff, act in complete disregard of these three concepts. They drastically reduce the opportunities that their children have to form long-term relationships, they create an unstable environment where people are constantly rotating in and out and, by doing those two things, they are causing psychological damage to the children that they are supposed to be helping.

As a privileged “gringa,” or white girl, who spends time in impoverished communities, I’ve come to realized not only what my presence can mean, but also what it can do. I know that when I was doing short-term volunteer work, I was as much of an exotic distraction to the children I was working with as they were to me. Even when they had the opportunity to form relationships with locals who could serve as role models, it was my presence that was highlighted. I, the person who was going to leave in just a few days, was given all the attention that should have been shined on the heroes who the children were interacting with every day.

Some might argue that this is giving volunteers too much credit since that all they are there to do is help. Any person who has had children climb on top of them in a frenzy for attention, clamor to have their picture taken, or cry in their arms as they prepare to leave, has to admit that they are in a position of immense power. By choosing to support orphanages that rely on volunteer labor, well-meaning volunteers are inadvertently using this power to exacerbate a broken system and disincentivize governments and NGOs from finding lasting systems-based solutions.

Even if the orphanage that you’ve been eyeing looks perfect, short-term volunteering at orphanages feeds a market that trafficks in, exploits, abuses, and permanently traumatizes the very children that you are looking to help. Even in the best of cases, short-term volunteer work, especially unskilled and non-specialized placements, encourage an uneven power dynamic in which the volunteers are held above the locals. They are looked to as benevolent angels, turning the lens away from the men and women who could serve as positive adult role-models for children who desperately need a stable family environment.

I’ve would never have labeled myself as abusive before I volunteered at an orphanage, and I think it’s fair to say that most volunteers would recoil at the suggestion that they could be categorized as abusers. Now that I know what orphanage volunteer does to children, I have to call it out for what it is - abusive and exploitative.

So no, you shouldn’t go. Don’t support orphanage volunteering. Don’t support child abuse.

You can support this effort in two ways:

1. Sign the petition calling on travel operators to remove orphanage volunteering placements from their websites.
2. Share this post, along with your thoughts on orphanage volunteering, using the hashtag #StopOrphanTrips. 

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON HUFFINGTON POST.

PIPPA BIDDLE

Pippa Biddle is a writer. Her work has been published by The New York Times online, Antillean Media Group, The FBomb, MTV, Elite Daily, Go Overseas, Matador Network, and more. She is a graduate of Columbia University with a degree in Creative Writing. Twitter: @PhilippaBiddle

BANGLADESH/INDIA: From No-Man's Land to the Unknown

For decades, more than 50,000 people have been stranded, without access to basic rights, on tiny islands of no-man’s land locked within India and Bangladesh. 2015 finally saw an end to these enclaves, or ‘chitmahals,’ bringing hope and change to communities living on the world’s most complex border.

The party lasted long into the night across remote patches of northern Bangladesh. As the clock struck midnight people played music, danced and sang using candles for light, and for the first time in their villages they raised a national flag. Similar events were also taking place on the other side of the border in India just a stone’s throw away. 

For 68 years, ever since the formation of East Pakistan in 1947 (which later became known as Bangladesh), the residents of one of the world’s greatest geographical border oddities have been waiting for this moment; for their chance to finally become part of the country that has surrounded yet eluded them for so many years.

At 12.01am on July 31st, 2015, India and Bangladesh finally exchanged 162 tracts of land — 111 inside Bangladesh and 51 inside India. 

Known in geographical terms as enclaves, or locally as chitmahals, these areas can most easily be described as sovereign pieces of land completely surrounded by another, entirely different, sovereign nation.

Inside an enclave, a man prepares jute by removing the long, soft vegetable fibres that can be spun into coarse, strong threads, and keeping the sticks. For many enclave dwellers, jute is where most of their income comes from and also what they use to build their houses.
 

Enclaves aren’t as rare as you may think, and until now this part of South Asia has contained the vast majority. Existing around the world, mostly in Europe and the former Soviet Union, they were once much more prevalent — until modern day cartography and accurately defined borders eliminated many. Some still remain, such as the Belgium town of Baarle-Hertog, which is full of Dutch territory. The locals have turned the unusual border into a tourist attraction. However, for this region of southern Asia, where political and religious tensions run high, the existence of enclaves is not so jovial. Life for those who are from these areas is far harder than in neighbouring villages, only minutes away.
 

Sisters Lobar Rani Bormoni, 11, and Shapla Rani Bormoni, 12, stand in a paddy field in the enclave in Bangladesh where they born.
 

“These enclaves are officially recognised by each state, but remain un-administered because of their discontinuous geography. Enclave residents are often described as “stateless” in that they live in zones outside of official administration — since officials of one country cannot cross a sovereign frontier into administered territory,” explains Jason Cons, a Research Assistant Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin and author of the forthcoming book, ‘Sensitive Space: Fragmented Territory at the India-Bangladesh Border.’
 

Muslim men from Dhoholakhagrabari enclave pray in their mosque. Mosques are usually the only solid structures that exist inside the enclaves.
 

Several folktales tell of the origin of these enclaves being the stakes in a game of chess between two feuding maharajas in the 18th century, or even the result of a drunken British officer who spilt spots of ink on the map he drew during partition in 1947. Captivating as these stories are, the most likely explanation dates back to 1711 when a peace treaty was signed between the feuding Maharajah of Coch Behar and the Mughal Emperor in Delhi. After the treaty their respective armies retained and controlled areas of land, where the local people had to pay tax to the respective ruler, thus creating pockets of land controlled by different people.

Prior to 1947, when this region was entirely Indian territory, living in these locally-controlled enclaves made little difference. However, during the drawing of the boundary between India and Bangladesh, the Maharajah of Coch Behar asked to join India — on the condition that he retain all his land, including that inside the newly formed East Pakistan, which his ancestors had rightly won control of over 200 years ago.

So, through no fault of their own, the lives of 50,000 people turned upside down — for decades they have been stranded on islands of no-man’s land.

A man fishes at dusk using his large bamboo fish trap. This river exists just outside the enclave but as it’s in Bangladesh territory, enclave dwellers are forbidden to fish here otherwise angering the local fishermen. 

Enclave dwellers fish in a flooded paddy.

During the early 1970s a framework to find a solution to this problem was put in place — called the 1974 Land Boundary Agreement. For forty years, as governments came and went, neither the Indian nor the Bangladeshi politicians were able to agree with their counterparts at the time. And whilst the politicians squabbled, the residents suffered.

Only informal work, like at this sawmill, is available for enclave dwellers in Bangladesh.
 

On the ground there are no border fences or security checkpoints, and without realising it, you can walk in and out of India countless times, crossing an international boundary completely obliviously. However, there is a serious lack of infrastructure and this has been one of the most serious problems facing the residents. Paved roads quite literally stop at the boundaries to the chitmahals, as do electricity poles. The enclave inhabitants in Debiganj District of Bangladesh, as non-Bangladeshi citizens, were even barred from sending their children to school, also receiving no state assistance or even the most basic of hospital treatment.

Sheltered within their small bamboo house, located inside the enclave of Dhoholakhagrabari, Eity Rani, 14, and Shobo Rai, 8, carefully do their homework by the light of an oil lamp. Life is much harder for children who are born in enclaves.

 A Bangladeshi man sits in a shop in the market of a small town that sits between enclaves.

Every Saturday a jute market is held in Debiganj. For the many inhabitants of the enclaves that surround the town, jute is where most of their income comes from.

Wearing just a lungi — a traditional sarong worn around the waist — Sri Ajit Memo is sitting in the middle of a small muddy courtyard, surrounded by houses made of bamboo and jute sticks. At 55 years old, his family have lived in a Dhoholakhagrabari chitmahal for generations. Chewing on the twig of a certain tree that locals here use as an alternative to toothpaste, he explains, “All kinds of problems exist here. The government doesn’t care about us, or our children, and so it’s very difficult for them to even go to school. Honestly, we are Indian, but how can we feel this way when we get no help from them?”

For enclave dwellers on both sides of the Indian-Bangladeshi border, the entitlement to receive even the most basic of rights has eluded them.

Reece Jones, an Associate Professor in Political Geography at the University of Hawai’i Manoa, who has visited many chitmahals on both sides of the border, explains further, “After decades in this situation many people have found ways around it through bribes to officials or through friends who helped them to obtain the documents they needed, such as school enrolment forms for their children. However, the situation was not stable or secure. They were extremely vulnerable to theft and violence because the police had no jurisdiction in the enclaves.”
 

Rupsana Begum, 7, (pink dress) and Monalisa Akter, 7, (orange dress) are from an enclave but were able to come and study at Sher-e-Bangla Government School because their parents managed to acquire fake documents and were able to pay the school.

In Dhoholakhagrabari enclave students and their teacher sit in a madrassa class. Because enclave children have a difficult time accessing the education system in Bangladesh the locals of this enclave formed an Islamic Foundation funded on donations.

Today, after decades left living in limbo in these randomly placed no-man’s lands, around 47,000 people on the Bangladeshi side and some 14,000 on the Indian side have finally been given the right make a choice: stay where they have lived for generations with official citizenship of the country that will absorb them, or return to their country of origin.

None of the residents living in Bangladeshi enclaves within India asked to return to Bangladesh and as a result they will now all become Indian citizens. However, on the other side of the border in Bangladesh, whilst the vast majority of the Indian enclave dwellers decided to stay and become Bangladeshi citizens, 979 people requested to return to India. For these families, the enclave saga has yet to end.

Of those 979 individuals, a total of 406 come from Debiganj district. In 2011, a team of Indian officials visited every home in every enclave in Bangladesh and produced the first ever detailed census of all those living within the Indian enclaves. This report formed the basis of all subsequent decisions on the status of each person living in the enclaves.
 

An old lady inside her home, which has no running water or electricity, in Dayuti enclave.
 

Dhonobala Rani, 70, gets emotional knowing that she has to leave her son (in the blue shirt) behind in Bangladesh, as she takes Indian citizenship.

Several months after my visit to document the enclaves during the final days of their existence, those who had chosen to leave for India finally crossed the border, leaving their homes in Bangladesh forever. In India they were given land and began the process of integrating into Indian society. Those who chose to stay behind in Bangladesh also started to receive such basic rights as eligibility to vote and access to health care.

Let us hope that after decades of struggle on these isolated political islands, the lives of these ex-enclaves dwellers can begin to reach some level of normalcy. In the end, after so many years of uncertainty, the world’s strangest border region has now become a thing of the past.

A lady from Ponchoki Bhajini village, in the enclave of Dhoholakhagrabari. She has chosen to leave for India, to start a new life as an Indian citizen. 
 

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON MAPTIA.

LUKE DUGGLEBY

Luke Duggleby is a British freelance documentary and travel photographer living in Bangkok.

VIDEO: Dirt Court Dreams in Africa

Just outside the southern wall of Kibera, the largest urban slum in Africa, is Sadili Oval Sports Academy. Meaning "well-being" in Swahili," Sadili is a social enterprise that uses sports as a means to reach out to children and young people in need - both in the slums and from across East Africa.
"Dirt Court Dreams" centers on Flo - a Kibera resident and tennis coach - and reflects how Sadili has made her life better and through her has, and is, improving the lives of many others.

VIDEO: Catalyst Series on Talking with Lineage Project

CATALYST talks with Gabrielle Horowitz-Prisco, Executive Director of Lineage Project, the social action organization bringing mindfulness and meditation to at risk and incarcerated youth in New York City.

CATALYST talks with Gabrielle Horowitz-Prisco, Executive Director of Lineage Project. LP is a social action organization that brings mindfulness and meditation to at-risk and incarcerated youth in New York City. 

CHINA: Love is Blind

The recently relaxed one-child policy in China led many parents to abandon children who were born with mental or physical disabilities.

Photographer Alice Carfrae travelled between Beijing and Zhengzhou to visit two projects run by Bethel, a dedicated organization that is set up to provide high-quality care, education, life skills and livelihood opportunities to blind and visually impaired children in China through foster care projects. Bethel also runs an associate programme in training and outreach called 555, which aims to prevent blindness, lower orphan rates and conduct eye screenings to identify young visually-impaired children living in the country.

Above: (Left) Cane belonging to En Hong who arrived at Bethel in 2008. They believe she may have been living on the streets. (Right) Yuan Ming has albinism. He came into Bethel’s care when he was just a year old. He has learned to walk and he is now talking a lot. 

Almost all of the children helped by Bethel have been abandoned by their parents, because they have a physical or mental health problems. Susan Ou, manager of Bethel’s Love is Blind project, says minor disabilities such as missing fingers can be reason enough for parents to abandon a child.

Above: (Far left) Gui Gui hugs his friend as they wait in line for lunch and then gives his teacher a big hug (middle). (Right) A teacher takes Ai Fei’s hand and guides her to class. 

In the past decades, China’s One Child policy has exacerbated this problem as a great deal of pressure is put on the child to provide for the rest of the family, especially for their parents as they reach old age. If they are unable to work, they cannot meet this requirement or support the family, and this leads some parents to abandon their child.

Above: Children attend a cognitive skills class at Bethel. Developing cognitive skills by moving parts of the body and using the senses at a young age is a very important for a child with a visual impairment. 

There are two projects within the Love is Blind programme. The first is a partnership between Bethel and an orphanage in Zhengzhou and another orphanage in Dou Dian, outside Beijing, which includes a farm, school and home for visually impaired children.

Above: (Left) Hong Fa plays the Chinese flute whilst his friend Xiao Dong listens. Peter (middle, right) loves to sing and has a perfect tenor voice. He was awarded a scholarship for his excellent work which he spent on music lessons.

Speech therapy is now regarded as a vital component for many of the children, and music also plays a huge part in the children’s lives, with specially designed music rooms offering stimulation and relaxation.

Above: Jian Ang (left) helps Jianshan do up his jacket at the orphanage in Zhengzhou. 

Early on, children are encouraged to understand the concept of their own bodies, which instils confidence and a strong sense of self. At Bethel, both the environment and the children are very well cared for, and this, in turn, helps to prevent the kind of discrimination against disabilities, which has pervaded wider Chinese society for many years.

Above: (Left) Yuan Ming has albinism, when he came into Bethel’s care he was just a year old. He has learned to walk and he is now talking a lot. (Right) Jian Ang also has albinism. When he arrived, he was a tiny, weak baby. Now he runs everywhere and does well in class. 

The role of education, whatever their needs, is paramount. 

Above: (Left) a caregiver touches the head of a child and describes what it does so that he understands the concept of his body. (Middle) Xuerou plays with her teacher, before coming to Bethel she could not even sit up. (Right) Children are encouraged to play and explore. 

In Alice's words:

Zhengzhou is not the prettiest city. Its grey buildings are shrouded by a grey choking smoke. Henan is one of China’s poorer provinces and its capital reflects this. The Zhengzhou City Children’s Welfare Institute is located on the very outskirts of the city, where land is cheaper.

Despite being newly painted, the centre still did not look especially inviting from the outside, but we were welcomed warmly by Ma Jingya, who has been working as a teacher there for two years.

When we arrived, the twelve children in Bethel’s preschool initiative were taking an after lunch nap. We took this chance to look around one of the apartments they share, including a girl’s room, a boy’s room and a separate space for babies. The apartment looked very cosy with the kitchen and living room especially feeling like family homes. The only clue to the nature of the environment is stickers with children’s names and pictures to identify chairs, cups and toothbrushes.

Above: Baby room at the Zhengzhou orphanage.

The first child to wake was Xuerou. As I walked over to her cot I could see her yawning and smiling to herself. I whispered hello and she squealed with delight. Susan Ou, Bethel’s manager, told me she loves being talked to and cuddled. Xuerou is a child in whom they have seen the most significant changes since her arrival, very weak and malnourished.

Xuerou’s former circumstances are not known, but at first, she couldn’t even sit up or eat solid food, nor had she ever been taught how to walk or talk. It took six months of intensive care for her to respond to food and three years before she was able to stand. Now she is six, and can walk, but remains very small for her age. Susan told me that she understands when you tell her she is beautiful and will let you brush her hair.

Above: When Xuerou first arrived at age 4, she was very weak. She couldn’t sit up or eat any solid food. She now understands when you tell her that she is beautiful and she loves being cuddled and having her hair brushed.

I also spent a day with Gui Gui, a five year old boy who came into Bethel’s care at 18 months, after being abandoned by his parents. Gui Gui was expecting us but was feeling too shy to say hello. However, his shyness dissipated as soon as his Braille class started. The teacher, who is also blind, formed the children into a group to act out the Braille dots. Gui Gui was particularly quick and bossy, shouting out answers and physically putting the others in the correct place.

Gui Gui has transformed over the years, staff told me, from a terrified little boy who couldn’t walk or talk into the smiling bundle of energy I see today, who jumps downstairs in his haste to get to lunch. It wasn’t long before he was taking my hand and guiding me round his home.

He took particular interest in my camera, feeling his way around the buttons and the shutter. He would shout for his friends and the teacher and when he located them he would point the camera in their direction and push the shutter button in rapid succession as though firing a gun.

Gui Gui showed me one of his favorite places, the music room. He can play many instruments including the piano, which he asked me to play with him. When he realized I am not musical, he sat himself on my lap, took my hands in his and guided my fingers to the right keys to help me play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star — which is exactly what he is.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON MAPTIA

Text by Legatum Foundation

ALICE CARFRAE

@ACarfrae

Alice Carfrae is an English documentary photographer currently based in Beijing, China. She works for clients such as The Telegraph magazine, Ford Foundation, Legatum, The Welsh Ruby Union, the Youth Justice Board, and Billionaire.com.

UGANDA: Kids from This Slum Are Dancing Their Way Out of Poverty

Sitya loss Eddy Kenzo Leka Nzine Ghetto Kids Dancing Sitya Loss New Ugandan music 2014 DjDinTV

There are several aspects of human life I strongly believe unite the world. You don’t need to speak the same language or share the same background to connect on any of these and that’s awesome!

What are they?

Food, science, math, sports, and the most fun… music and dancing. Which is partly why this video is so inspiring and went viral with over 14 million views last year.

Yes, these kids should clearly be onstage with Beyoncé for their incredible dance moves. But that’s not the only reason this video is fantastic.

The kids dancing in this video are known as the Ghetto Kids. They are from the slums in Kampala, Uganda, and thanks to their math teacher Dauda Kavuma they train almost daily to improve their dance techniques and the quality of lives for their families.

The Ghetto Kids dance video has allowed some of the children in this video to afford school supplies, stay in school, and even provide better homes for their families.

Sometimes it doesn’t take much to improve the lives of those living in poverty. In this case— a great teacher and people like you willing to share how incredible these kids truly are can make a huge difference.

Update: The Ghetto Kids are now working on creating high production videos, continuing to dance and perform and most importantly continuing their education, according to BBC. I hope to see these kids onstage with Beyoncé at the next Global Citizen Festival (if it’s okay with their math teacher and parents first).

You can go to TAKE ACTION NOW and help kids get the education they need and deserve.

MEGHAN WERFT

@MWerft26

Meghan is a Digital Content Creator at Global Citizen. After studying International Political Economy at the University of Puget Sound she moved to New York. Originally from California she brings her love of yoga, kayaking and burritos to the big city. She is a firm believer that education and awareness on global issues has the power to create a more sustainable, equal world where poverty does not exist.

USA: Skateboarding with Lakota Youth

‘Skateboarding In Pine Ridge’ chronicles a skatepark build and the life of the Lakota youth in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. After watching it, we hope you are moved by the incredible work of the Stronghold Society - an organization dedicated to empowering youth through skateboarding, art and music. #skateboardingsaveslives www.levi.com/skateboarding Directed by Greg Hunt Original Score by David Pajo Additional Track by Cat Power Special thanks to Imprint Projects http://strongholdsociety.org

'Skateboarding in Pine Ridge' chronicles a skatepark build and the lives of Lakota youth in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. The director hopes to put a spotlight the hard work of the Stronghold Society, an organization dedicated to empowering youth through skateboarding, art, and music.

LEARN MORE HERE

Anything is Possible: Removing 'NO' from your Vocabulary

When I think about what it takes to change the world, I think that the most important thing is being able to ignore the word no. You’ll be hit with no all the time as a shameless idealist, and each time you dust it off, you get one step closer to making the difference that you want to make. People will say that you aren’t old enough, don’t have enough money, there aren’t enough of you, there is too much to be done, that you won’t reach your goals, that your contribution isn’t going to make an impact. You’ll hear doors slam, people will walk right past you, some will even laugh at you. In their own way, each of these people will be saying no to your vision — your dream for a better world.

Don’t listen to them.

When I was in high school, I saw the first Invisible Children DVD a couple weeks after it was released. As the credits rolled, I knew that my life would be forever changed by what I had just become a witness to. I started spreading the word around, but raising awareness amongst the people I knew just wasn’t enough — I wanted to contribute, to do something for those kids that I now felt I knew.

I wrangled two of my friends into helping me with a half-baked idea, and soon, we had turned a room in my house into a home-base of sorts, with maps of Uganda, Invisible Children swag, posters, pamphlets and a mini fridge. From there, we decided we wanted to throw a benefit concert to raise money and awareness for “The Rescue”, Invisible Children’s campaign to rescue child soldiers from Joseph Kony.  This is when we began to hear the word no.

We went to our principal with a pitch – she told us that we were too young, too inexperienced, and that there weren’t enough of us to run a concert. She suggested a bake sale. I sat on the steps in front of my school and cried, in despair that I would never be old enough or important enough to make the difference I wanted to make, the one I knew I could make if I was given a shot. However, in what I now look back on as the most defining moment of my short life, I decided that her no was not going to stop me. We would have our benefit concert, and she would see what kids can do when they put their hearts and minds to it.

Three months later, I was standing on stage behind City Hall, shaking hands with the Mayor, who had given us the space for free, watching 50 Starbucks volunteers hand out coffee, proceeds from which would join their $2000 donation and the donations of the many attendees and other sponsors. Bands were backstage, getting ready to perform, and my friends and I had just finished a front-page interview for the local paper.  At the end of the night, I handed Invisible Children’s representatives a cheque for $9,452 dollars. Months after that, we ran a full day festival on Victoria Day, raising even more for the incredible cause. My principal attended the concert.

Years later, with new challenges and new nos coming at me every day, I always remember that day — the day I decided that I would never let anyone else, or their opinions of what I am capable of, define me. World changers for centuries have come to the same conclusions – Nelson Mandela spent 20 years in prison, denying the word no, inspiring the world as he sought freedom and equality as South Africa’s first black President. Amelia Earhart shook off the word no and became the first female pilot. Gandhi ignored no and led his country out of oppression with non-violent protest. Jane Goodall ignored no and faced countless danger to follow her passion. Everyday, world changers shake up their communities and the global landscape by striding past every no, with their heads high, and doing what others believe cannot be done. So if anyone out there tells you that you can’t do something — you can’t win that race, you’re not smart enough to be a lawyer, you can’t raise enough money, you can’t make an impact, you’re not strong enough to change the world — deny them the power of defining what you choose to try. Do what everyone thinks you can’t, and show them that you can. 

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE CHANGE HEROES BLOG

NATASHA BEITMAN

@NatashaBeitman

Natasha Beitman is a fourth year International Development Studies major at York University. She aspires to attend law school in the fall, to pursue a career in criminal law. She is passionate about philanthropy and issues of global development and environmental sustainability, and strives to be a positive role model and mentor to high school student and university freshmen. She is also currently involved as Co-President of the Mosaic Institutes 2013-2014 Dialogue Series, which aims to create peaceful relationships between historically opposed groups on Toronto campuses. She is an avid foodie who enjoys old vinyl records, good books, and wrestling with her Doberman, Gracie.