Access to Education for Girls in Rural Bangladesh

স্বাগত ¡Bienvenido! Welcome!

This GoFundMe has been created on behalf of the missionary Fr. Francesco Rizzo from the Diocese of Ibarra, Ecuador serving in the province of Sylhet, Bangladesh. Friends and supporters of this important project can donate from outside Ecuador via this campaign.

What will be built with your donation?

The funds donated will support the construction of the student residence for girls at Saint Michael Mission in Kamudpur, Bangladesh. It will house approximately 30 female students, providing optimal conditions in which they can study, receive nutritious meals and benefit from human and spiritual formation. The student residents will be able to attend classes at the nearest school less than two miles away. This will provide an enormous advantage to these girls, as they come from families employed on the tea plantations whose extremely low income and transportation difficulties drastically lower their chances of completing school, and the resulting rates of school dropout and early marriage are high. The residence at St. Michael Mission will provide a wonderful advantage to these students as they continue in their education.

The residence will have two floors, with foundations allowing for the addition of a third floor. The cost of construction in local currency is BDT 15,578,234, which is €131,000.

Our current goal of €88,000 will cover the construction of the first floor.

What’s life like for these students and their families?

The province of Sylhet, in the northeastern part of Bangladesh, is characterized by the tea plantations and forests where paan leaves and betel nuts are cultivated. There, particularly in the district of Moulvibazar, the poorest of the poor live and work. The social and economic condition is extreme: they live in small earth homes, without electricity or potable water, nor sanitary lavatories. Their income barely provides for their subsistence. A day’s wages for a worker on a tea plantation is $1.50 USD and the tea companies’ regulations generally do not allow more than one employee from the same family on the payroll, therefore a family must survive on a single income. The employees and their families have very limited access to education and healthcare due to the insufficient number of facilities as well as difficulties with transportation.

The mission’s health services center has already been constructed and will be inaugurated in early 2024. The first steps are being taken to build the student residence for girls from the surrounding villages whose families are employed by the tea plantations and farms. Father Francesco Rizzo directs the mission.

The funds will be deposited in the account of Shapla' per il Bangladesh, Associazione no profit, the NGO account for the mission.

This page will be managed by the Amigos de la Mision Bangladesh, Friends of the Mission in Bangladesh, parishioners in Ecuador.

Para los amigos en el Ecuador:

Cuenta de ahorro del Banco del Pichincha, Francesco Rizzo.

Cuenta: 2203737511

C.I./RUC: 0959298720

Email: [email redacted]