M. Jahangir Hossain :
The National Children Policy 2011 of Bangladesh mandated, “the Social Safety Net has to be expanded to ensure the rehabilitation of all poor children and street children”, acknowledging the presence of street children in an underprivileged category of its own, and thus recognising their special needs. To support the initiatives of the governmental bodies, the non-government and not-for-profit sectors have been actively working towards addressing the crisis of the underprivileged children. The latter have engaged themselves in securing basic human rights, physical, mental and moral development, education, basic refuge and empowerment for these children.
The capital and most metro cities of the country, in particular the slums, public parks, pavements, bus terminals, railway station and ferry terminals, are thronged with informal settlements of homeless people, who have embraced those available spaces as their own. A huge proportion of this population is made up of street children. These children and their fates have been resigned to the mercy of the laws of the street and a very unusual upbringing that involves deprivation of all basic rights, violence and abuse. It has turned into a national epidemic and the numbers of these neglected children keep increasing with more than a staggering 13 lakhs currently, as obtained from various survey reports.
The life of the street children entail unhygienic, deplorable conditions that violate all form of human rights and hence, in pursuit of providing a safe refuge, rehabilitation and empowerment in the long-term, based on the President of Dhaka Ahsania Mission, Kazi Rafiqul Alam’s vision, adopting the philosophy of Khan Bahadur Ahsanullah (R.) and keeping in line with his ideology, the Ahsania Mission Children City was established in 2011.
Staying true to the belief that the best way to serve god is to serve humanity, the first children city for the underprivileged children started its construction in the Jalpara village of the Sadar Thana, Hafizabad Union in the Panchagarh district. Currently, 270 underprivileged children reside at this campus. Kindernothilfe, a charity organisation from Germany, have financially contributed in establishing the children city and various others from all across the country have donated to ensure smooth operation of the institution.
Ahsania Mission Children City admits children between 6-8 years old and through coordinated care, caters for their socioeconomic protection; literacy and vocational training for their financial and emotional empowerment; nutrition, safe lodging, clothing, medical observation, securing up until secondary form of formal education and scholarship opportunities, to providing important life skills to become a resourceful part of the community by adopting the right attitude towards life, develop morally conscientious values, a positive transformation, and life coaching to become a responsible citizen in their professions on a national stage. The idea is to reintegrate these children back into the mainstream society after proper rehabilitation.
Besides all that, freedom is observed for the practice of all religions; there is provision for indoor and outdoor playing; singing, dancing, performing and recitation classes; arts and home economics; sports and social work training; book club; higher studies; edutainment; healthy competitions; physical fitness classes; counselling services; legal services; work placement opportunities.
The children are left in the charge of capable hands including on-campus workers, teachers, sports and music instructors, and providing counselling care are clinical psychologists and overseeing the regular exercise sessions are paramedics and professional medical officers.
The children in the city are trained to perform agricultural work and look after farm animals. Once the children come of age, they will be enrolled into various vocational training programmes that would equip them with the real-life knowledge and expertise to convert into financial independence.
Every year, the children city celebrates national and international days, education fairs, annual picnic, and sports and cultural events. Weekly competitions are also held to encourage them in maths, home-economics, recitation, dancing, singing, performance, debate, public speaking, storytelling, creative writing and through their activities in indoor games, display their brilliance and creativity. In 2016, six students from the children city appeared for Primary Education Completion Examination and all of them successfully passed. Out of the six, two of them received scholarship.
A talent hunt is also conducted to identify and uncover those extraordinary capabilities hidden in children in a particular field. Every person is born with a talent in their most pristine state and it is possible for that ability to resurface, provided the right environment is created in which it can thrive. The children in this city is provided leadership skills training and life coaching regularly. Every month on the 29th, children’s day is celebrated at this institution. For that one day, all the children take over the responsibility of managing and running the campus. The children are represented in every committee of this institution through a democratically selected child representative. To better practise democracy, a child counsellor in charge of the seven sections are elected directly through voting. The seven sections are: environment, sports and culture, plantation of trees and gardening, water conservation, health, books and stationary, reception and hospitality counselling.
The honourable Prime Minister had long since declared the freedom of street children from their maladies. The children city plans on playing a key role in supporting the Prime Minister’s goal in this aspect. The objective is to take in 100 children every year to accommodate 1,000 children in ten children cities and 10,000 children altogether in capacity. In turn, the concept of this children city will be replicated and adopted by every zila in the country through the efforts of governmental and non-governmental organisations to reach underprivileged children everywhere, to ensure no child is seen occupying the streets anymore. The children will be raised with the expectation, through the state of the art care facilities and training that they can take on any role nationally or internationally through the embodiment of their abilities.
In parallel, to build a Bangladesh without street children, the children city will work in harmony with other organisations invested in similar efforts to advocate creating governmental policy in favour of street children. In pursuit, Dhaka Ahsania Mission has joined the ‘Street Children Activist Network’ with the intent to produce a social protection body for street children, prevent them from becoming a burden on society and instead, become an asset to the nation with significant contribution in the socioeconomic prospects of the country. Ahsania Mission Children City relentlessly works towards making that dream a reality one day.
