nl en  

Television for streetchildren's shelter Dhaka House € 400 Bangladesh

  • Moments-of-joy op Facebook


Dhaka House is a shelter for streetchildren in Bangladesh, set up by a Dutchman. With his own savings and a handful of donations from friends, he rented a number of shags (made from corregated iron, reeths etc) in a poor area of Dhaka.


This is where about 33 children are taking care of with the help of a few carers, who themselves are ex-streetchildren. Two older children, who attend Technical College, help out with the odd jobs. Everyone involved, including the doctors who sometimes help out, are volunteers. The backgrounds of these children is dismal: young children who have been so badly abused, that they can't walk when they arrive and whose rehabilitation will take a long time.

Traumatised children who wet their beds. Fifteen children are physically disabled, four of these are also mentally disabled. Two severely mentally disabled children (4 and 6 years old) are permanently locked up in a cage for their own safety, to avoid them going off into the streets, with all the dangers that that would entail for them. Some of the children are orphans, others do have parents, but don't remember who they are or where they are from. If the parents are still around, Dhaka House aims at returning these children to their parents, if possible.

There is a lot of coming and going in these shags. Many children only stay for a couple of months to recuperate and then return to the streets. The children who used to attend a local Primary School were taken out of there, because they were punished (corporal punishment is still acceptable here) for not having clean shirt collars, for example. They are now being taught by volunteers. Dhaka House manages, only just, to feed everyone twice a day (by , for example, buying leftover vegetables from the market at evening time), which is luxury to these children. Moments of Joy previously donated 1500 Euros for small matrasses, floormats, emergency lights, games, school materials and fans for the caged children. This time, we would very much like to pay for a television. For the children's entertainment, especially for the physically disabled children, who are rarely able to get out of the house.