GENKIプログラム対象校、次回の血液検査とユーグレナクッキー年間配布目標達成にむけての準備
【2016年7月活動報告】
1.First of all
Thank you for your continued support of the GENKI program.
Due to Ramadan and Eid (festival after Ramadan) in July, half of the month was closed. Although the attendance rate has decreased significantly and the number of distributions has decreased, in August we signed a contract with a new elementary school to make up for it, and about 400 children will participate in this program.
Recently, terrorism has occurred not only in Bangladesh but all over the world. The impact has had a major impact on this program, and Japanese staff are still unable to visit the target schools in the city. Bangladeshi people are also in a dangerous situation and their operations are often stagnant to ensure their safety. Regular visits and monitoring are essential to ensure that the distributed cookies are eaten by children. If this is neglected, the children will take the cookies home or give them to their friends, so they will not be disappointed. We do our best every day, keeping in mind that it is our important role not only to distribute cookies but also to carry out such work properly.
2. Preparation for blood test in October
From the blood test conducted in October, the number of subjects will increase by 100 from the previous time to a total of 300. This new 100 people will be a cookie-free group. Although it is to make the test useful, it does not benefit from the GENKI program, so we ask children to prepare notebooks and pencils instead of cookies to help measure the effect. Also, many of the subjects' children do not know their exact age, so they must work hard to confirm their age. The reality of Bangladesh is that it takes many times more time and effort to perform a blood test in Japan (Photos 1 and 2).
Photo-1: Confirming the age of each child
Photo-2: Children showing materials for age confirmation
3. Achievement of annual goals and distribution
The management staff of the GENKI program makes various efforts and efforts to ensure that children can eat cookies, but unfortunately not all of them are well managed. Occasionally, we discover the fact that cookies that should have been distributed at school are distributed at mosques, and that some children take cookies home. Ask these schools to temporarily stop distribution until the reason and cause are known, and promise in writing that they will never cause trouble again.
Recently, at the two schools that had problems (Photos 3 and 4), we had repeated meetings with the teachers and had the prospect of improvement, so we are now resuming distribution. In the future, I would like to closely monitor this situation so that it does not occur.
In addition, at the school where cookies are newly distributed, parents of participating children gathered and held an exchange party (Photo 5).
Photo-3: Meeting with the school where the problem occurred Part 1
Photo-4: Meeting at the school where the problem occurred Part 2
Photo-5: Exchange meeting with parents (at the new contract school)
4. The story of Rifad eating Euglena
The boy in the photo is Rifad (Photo-6), 11 years old. He works for a bus company while studying in the fifth grade of elementary school. I'm still a child, but I'm already a part of my household budget.
The family is a family of four, the father works at the construction site, and the mother works as a maid. It's hard to live in a really poor family. He works from 17:30 to 19:00 after school. I work as a conductor of Leguna (small shared bus) (Photo 7) and earn a monthly wage of 1000 taka (about 1,400 yen) and 20-30 taka (30-40 yen) per day.
He works six days a week (only on Fridays) while attending an NGO school called Aparajyo-Bangladesh. Rifad dreams of becoming a doctor and helping society in the future.
The GENKI program provides cookies to children in poor families who go to school while doing this kind of work.
Photo-6: Rifad
Photo-7: Leguna moving into Dhaka city
5. Summary
As the scale of the project expands, the problems reported this time are occurring. Taking advantage of our mistakes and experience, we will create a manual to deal with these issues and thoroughly implement countermeasures for team members. Thank you for your continued support.
Euglena Co., Ltd.
Bangladesh Office Project Manager
Mohammed Akerzaman