March 2021

Khulna, Bangladesh.

Dear members of The Redondo Beach Rotary Club,

I hope all members are well during the COVID-19 situation. I am encouraging our slum people for online registration of COVID 19 Vaccine which has been started from the first week of February in our country. Our government is getting the vaccines from SARAM Health Institute, Indian. I want to take COVID vaccine but the citizens under 40s are not allowed for registration. Our country will need about 180,000,000 vaccines for a single dose to cover every person which is a doubtful goal to achieve in a few years. Is it possible or the richest country will give us free to get rid of the virus?

Twenty-five  Amarok Mothers of our school are still working as health volunteer that people wash hands constantly, wear face masks and maintain social distancing as much as possible for them. It is really difficult to maintain distancing as we live in a small compound, use common washroom, well, kitchen and our rooms are adjacent. Presently the number of infections has decreased. One of the reasons could be the immunity among the people has improved to fight against the virus. We are telling people to take vitamin ‘C’ through food first then supplementary and for regular basis, zinc ‘B’, ‘D’ through sunlight and maintain family health & hygiene. Every day I take a sunlight with my family members for an hour. We are very lucky for getting SUNLIGHT from the early morning.

You will be happy to know that during the food crisis of lockdown mothers of our school played a key role that nobody died without food in our slum. We decided to help each other from our ability and encouraged others to share food with them who had nothing to eat for the day considering their work security. During that situation, our slogan is “SERVING the HELPLESS”. We ensured every child is getting food and there are many evidences that mothers offered a meal to a hungry child sharing her own food. In our slum 13 families were in extreme need of food but other families helped them as long as they could manage a job for earning. Almost every mother of our school has children of their own and we understand how much a mother loves to her child. From that thinking mothers of our school operated a

FOOD BANK for 16 hungry children for 4 months from September to December 2020. Now we are not continuing this but collecting a fund and depositing to use that to overcome if another challenge comes in the future. We are grateful to or friends Jumur and Janu Begum who initiated and leaded the initiative and later on others with the initiative. Our schoolteacher Nadira Parvin played a key role from behind that we could do it successfully. We all live in a close compound and have a good relationship with each other. Even some poor families donated handful of rice, pulses and sometimes an egg as their contribution. Mothers of our school like Amena, Jannat, Begum every day went out visiting the wealthier household for collection food for the FOOD BANK. The mother Amena says, “It was not begging rather asking for the hungry poor children, I did not feel shy to ask as it gave me a great pleasure.”

With love,

Sathie