Dhaka House is a shelter for street children run by volunteers. Two years ago, Moments of Joy helped them with the furnishing of the shelters, which were then providing a home for 33 children. Now Geert has 90 children, the youngest one 18 months and the oldest 17 years old, living in four very simple houses.
There are a lot of street children in Dhaka. Only the worst cases are taken in, those that have no way of finding a reasonable living somewhere else and are not "owned" by someone. This means that all children have very sad histories. They were abused, tortured or left to die in the street, sometimes already wrapped in plastic. Some of them are severely handicapped, all of them are traumatised; we will spare you the heartbreaking details of their past.
Their current situation however is amazingly good. The houses are simple sheds with minimal furnishings in one of the poorest neighbourhoods of Dhaka. Life is not easy; sometimes there is not enough money to pay for two meals a day, and other basic needs often remain unfulfilled. Most of the time, medication is too expensive to buy and visits to doctors or dentists are too costly. But one meal a day is more than the children were used to when they still lived on the streets and they stitch open wounds themselves with a simple needle and thread.
However difficult the existence might be according to our western standards, they did manage to create a real home for his children. In all four houses the atmosphere is open and friendly.
All children go to school and get extra education from volunteers and older children at home to try and make up for the school years they have missed. Children that can and want to go to high school after primary school are stimulated to do so and help run the households after school. For the other older children Geert tries to find jobs. Boys and girls live in separate houses but meet regularly for music and art evenings where everybody participates in an "act". These gatherings are also popular with the local residents.
_0.png)
_0.png)
Dhaka house needs relatively little money. (We paid 83 Euro for 25 extra blankets; the rent for 4 houses including electricity is 400 Euro a month.) But it is still very difficult to raise the needed Taka's (national currency).
We left 800 Euro with our "project finder" in Bangladesh (a Dutch diplomat) to buy some "extras" like painkillers, disinfectant, clothes, a goat, some chickens, a bicycle, notebooks, some toys and - I really specified this - an outing to the local theme park (entrance 20 Eurocents p.p.).
TOTAL: € 800,-- FOR MEDICINE AND EQUIPMENT
OR € 400,-- P.M. RENT ALL IN.
ADOPTED BY FRIENDS OF MOMENTS OF JOY, MONACO
There are a lot of street children in Dhaka. Only the worst cases are taken in, those that have no way of finding a reasonable living somewhere else and are not "owned" by someone. This means that all children have very sad histories. They were abused, tortured or left to die in the street, sometimes already wrapped in plastic. Some of them are severely handicapped, all of them are traumatised; we will spare you the heartbreaking details of their past.
Their current situation however is amazingly good. The houses are simple sheds with minimal furnishings in one of the poorest neighbourhoods of Dhaka. Life is not easy; sometimes there is not enough money to pay for two meals a day, and other basic needs often remain unfulfilled. Most of the time, medication is too expensive to buy and visits to doctors or dentists are too costly. But one meal a day is more than the children were used to when they still lived on the streets and they stitch open wounds themselves with a simple needle and thread.
However difficult the existence might be according to our western standards, they did manage to create a real home for his children. In all four houses the atmosphere is open and friendly.
All children go to school and get extra education from volunteers and older children at home to try and make up for the school years they have missed. Children that can and want to go to high school after primary school are stimulated to do so and help run the households after school. For the other older children Geert tries to find jobs. Boys and girls live in separate houses but meet regularly for music and art evenings where everybody participates in an "act". These gatherings are also popular with the local residents.
Dhaka house needs relatively little money. (We paid 83 Euro for 25 extra blankets; the rent for 4 houses including electricity is 400 Euro a month.) But it is still very difficult to raise the needed Taka's (national currency).
We left 800 Euro with our "project finder" in Bangladesh (a Dutch diplomat) to buy some "extras" like painkillers, disinfectant, clothes, a goat, some chickens, a bicycle, notebooks, some toys and - I really specified this - an outing to the local theme park (entrance 20 Eurocents p.p.).
TOTAL: € 800,-- FOR MEDICINE AND EQUIPMENT
OR € 400,-- P.M. RENT ALL IN.
ADOPTED BY FRIENDS OF MOMENTS OF JOY, MONACO
© Moments of Joy All rights reserved - info@moments-of-joy.org - 
+31 70 3241997 - IBAN: NL72 TRIO 0784 9315 69
+31 70 3241997 - IBAN: NL72 TRIO 0784 9315 69