This fortnight's thi>eFishing For Life Issue 153
 
 


Project Compassion Week One Focus: Bangladesh

“Lasting peace can not be achieved unless large population groups
find ways in which to break out of poverty.”
Ole Danbolt Mjøs

Fair Play Today
Imagine a cricket game where the rules were continually broken and the umpiring was deemed to be biased, or a netball game where one team had nine players and the other a mere five. The games are unfair as one team has an advantage over the other – this is not fair. Fair play can also mean playing fair by the rules of life; playing fair to make sure that all people have a level playing field in terms of education, employment, health and housing. The theme of Project Compassion 2007 is just that – “Fair Play Today”. Fair play can be related to many areas of society.

Populorum Progressio
Pope Paul VI wrote this encyclical, which is an official Church teaching, in 1967. Although this was forty years ago, it is still very relevant to life today. The name of the encyclical was Populorum Progressio which means On the Development of Peoples. One of the main messages of Populorum Progressio is that we all have a role to play in empowering people to help themselves break free from poverty and be “architects of their own progress”. However, this can only happen if we act justly and “play fairly” at all times and with all people.

Bangladesh
Bangladesh is a tiny country located on the Indian sub continent. It is bordered by India, Burma and the Bay of Bengal. It was once called East Pakistan but became an independent country in 1971. Bangladesh is only the size of Victoria and yet it is home to over 147 million people. This is hard to understand because the whole population of Australia is just over 20 million. The capital city of Dhaka alone is home to over 10 million people – half the population of Australia.

Farid Pathang

Farid Pathang
Farid Pathang, his wife Alpona and their nine year old son Homar are like thousands of other Bangladeshi families. They are farmers who live in the central north village of Samuniapara in Mymensingh, Bangladesh. In a country where the population is high, weather is erratic and sickness and disease are high, it is difficult to make a living.

In 1991, Caritas Australia’s partners, Caritas Bangladesh, visited Samuniapara and over many months spent time with the people, building up relationships of trust, listening to the concerns of the people in the village and encouraging the people to identify areas of priority and ways they could go about achieving their goals. Caritas encouraged the community to form a village committee.

Seeing the success of this program, Farid and his family joined the program in 1998.

One of the areas of need identified was the importance of access to nutritional food. Before becoming involved in the Caritas supported program, many families in Farid’s village were subsistence farmers. This meant they lived from day to day, ate what they grew and struggled to produce enough food to survive.

In order to improve nutrition and provide an income, the people in the village established fish farms. Training and support were provided by Caritas. With help from their neighbours, Farid and his family dug a pond and filled it with baby fish. The community was also encouraged to grow fruit and vegetables around the fish pond. Farid and his family now grow tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, chillies, mangoes, guava, olives and trees for timber.

Alpona joined the Caritas supported savings group. Each week each member of the savings group sets aside a very small amount of money so that members of the saving group can apply for a loan. This is an important example of “Fair Play Today”. Without a savings group, people are often forced to borrow from moneylenders who charge very high interest rates (sometimes up to 70% interest) which makes it difficult to repay loans. Now, low interest rates through the savings group allow people to set up small businesses.

The people in Farid and Alpona’s village have worked very hard to ensure that they no longer need to buy food from the market as they can grow adequate crops and fish. They are also working to promote gender equality by including women and men in the establishing of the fish farms. The people in the village of Samuniapara are indeed “striving for fuller growth”, something Pope Paul VI speaks of in Populorum Progressio.

Kids

Sadly, Farid recently died of a sudden heart attack. This loss underlines the hardship of life in rural Bangladesh – the importance of access to nutritional food; the impact of ongoing hard labour; the difficulties in accessing adequate health services. Farid was active and excited about helping his family and community to improve their lives – a dream he worked passionately to achieve. Farid’s death is an important reminder to us all that we must recommit ourselves to halving world poverty through the Millennium Development Goals today. This is one way of ensuring that Farid’s legacy will live on.

Festival of Global Concern
From April 13-15, 2007 Caritas Australia is holding the Festival of Global Concern, a trans-Tasman youth festival for students in Years 11 and 12 and their teachers. One of the keynote speakers is Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez, Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras. He is one of Latin America’s leading activists for justice and human rights, and has been at the forefront of confronting corruption in society and championing the rights of the poor and marginalised in a globalised world. For further information go to: http://www.caritas.org.au/events/
festivalGlobalConcern.htm

    

Teaching and Learning Activities

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

1) Caritas Australia is holding a Festival of Global Concern in April 2007. The Festival is for students from around Australia and New Zealand in Year 11 and 12 and their teachers who are interested in working for justice and peace, making the world a fairer place, and making poverty history! For more information go to:www.caritas.org.au/events/
festivalGlobalConcern.htm

2) Go to: http://www.caritas.org.au/
project_compassion_07/pdf/Sec2.pdf and read the Week 1 Lenten Story. In the Gospel of Luke Jesus talks of “bringing good news to the poor”. Luke 4: 16-19, 21. How does the story of Farid and his family relate to this statement? For some suggestions see: http://www.caritas.org.au/whoweare/
mission.htm

3) “Give me a fish and I eat for a day. Teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime”. Comment on the relevance of this in light of Farid’s story.

4) As Lent is beginning, design a prayer service to launch Project Compassion. Use Page One at http://www.caritas.org.au/
project_compassion_07/pdf/SecBook.pdf as a basis.

5) Go to http://www.caritas.org.au/
project_compassion_07/pdf/SecBook.pdf and complete the two questions on Page 12. Read Farid’s story again on Page 2 to remind you of the focus for this week.

6) Go to http://www.caritas.org.au/
project_compassion_07/interactive/index.html and view the interactive resources from Caritas. Download and watch videos and PowerPoint presentations to raise your awareness of this year’s Project Compassion appeal.

7) Go to http://www.caritas.org.au/
project_compassion_07/pdf/Reflections.pdf and use the reflections for a class prayer service.

ENGLISH

1) Go to http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/
peace/laureates/2006/presentation-speech.html and read the presentation speech for the announcement of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. Write a detailed newspaper article for the Dhaka Post – the local newspaper in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka.

SCIENCE

1) Energy is a requirement for all civilisations. People use energy to provide heat for warmth and cooking, as well as to gain access to technology. Certain countries in the world have a lot more access than other do. Go to http://cyberschoolbus.un.org/infonation/
index.asp?theme=env&id=50 and answer the following questions:

  1. Click on energy consumption per capita and read about what energy consumption is. Compare the consumption of energy in Bangladesh with the rest of the world.
  2. Click on water resources per capita and read about water resources and availability. Compare the volume of water available in Bangladesh with the rest of the world.
  3. Click on carbon dioxide emissions per capita and read about the carbon dioxide emissions per capita.
    1. Compare the emissions levels between Bangladesh and the rest of the world.
    2. What does ‘per capita’ mean?
    3. Why would there be such a large difference?
    4. Name ways that carbon dioxide is produced
    5. Carbon dioxide emissions in thousands of metric tons for Australia is 337,973. Compare this to the emissions for Bangladesh and compare it to the populations of each country.

HSIE/SOSE

1) Go to http://www.caritas.org.au/
project_compassion_07/pdf/Sec8.pdf and use the information in the table to answer the questions found at http://www.caritas.org.au/
project_compassion_07/pdf/Sec9.pdf

Geography

Go to http://www.un.org/Depts/Cartographic/
map/profile/banglade.pdf and print a copy of the map of Bangladesh. Locate Mymensingh, the region where Farid’s family live.

  1. Describe the location of Mymensingh in Bangladesh.
  2. What is the name of the closest river?
  3. Use the scale of the map to calculate how far Mymensingh is from Dhaka.
  4. Name five other region’s located in the Dhaka division

Economics

1) Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a measure of a country’s total and per-person production of goods and services. It measures how strong the country’s economy is. The higher the GDP the better or stronger the country’s economy is. It looks at the amount of money provided by the government, the income from imports and local goods. Go to http://cyberschoolbus.un.org/
infonation/index.asp?theme=eco&id=50 and compare the GDP of Bangladesh with the GDP of Australia at http://cyberschoolbus.un.org/infonation/
index.asp?theme=eco. How do the two compare?

2) Go to http://www.grameen-info.org/
Media/mediadetail6.html and read about the Grameen Bank and microcredit.

  1. What is microcredit?
  2. How is it successfully used?
  3. Who benefits from it?
  4. Why are small loans enough to assist people the set themselves up for life?

TAS (Technical and Applied Science)

1) Go to http://cyberschoolbus.un.org/
infonation/index.asp?theme=tec&id=50 and compare the results for Bangladesh with Australia http://cyberschoolbus.un.org/infonation/
index.asp?theme=tec.

  1. How do the two countries compare with each other?
  2. Comment on the technology available today in Australia and identify reasons why this technology may not be available in Bangladesh.

MATHEMATICS

1) Go to http://www.caritas.org.au/
project_compassion_07/pdf/Sec8.pdf and use the table of information to answer the following:

  1. How much bigger in area is Australia than Bangladesh?
  2. How many times could the population of Australia fit into Bangladesh?
  3. How many more years would a woman living in Australia live than a woman living in Bangladesh? Also compare this to the life expectancy of an Indigenous Australian woman.
  4. Electricity consumption per capita is the amount of electricity each person uses in a year. Calculate the total amount of electricity used in Bangladesh each year using the population number included.

PD/H/PE

Health

1) Go to http://www.caritas.org.au/
project_compassion_07/pdf/Sec8.pdf and answer the following:

  1. How would the low number of doctors in Bangladesh affect the level of medical attention received?
  2. Suggest reasons why infant deaths and deaths of children under five are so much higher in Bangladesh than they are in Australia.
  3. How could education for pregnant women help reduce the death rate of mothers who die giving birth?
  4. Read about tuberculosis and how it is spread at http://www.who.int/tb/en/ and then compare the incidence of tuberculosis between Australia and Bangladesh.
  5. How could the public expenditure on health in Bangladesh account for the high levels of death and disease?

2) 40 people per 100,000 in Bangladesh suffer from Malaria. Go to http://www.searo.who.int/en/Section10/
Section21/Section334.htm and research malaria.

  1. What is malaria?
  2. How is it transmitted?
  3. What people would be at risk of developing malaria?

PARISH/COMMUNITY/SOCIAL JUSTICE GROUPS

1) Start preparing for Project Compassion by accessing the materials at:
http://www.caritas.org.au/
project_compassion_07/about/index.html. There are posters, films, PowerPoint presentations, teaching materials for all school levels, prayer resources, reflections, liturgies and much more.

2) Reflections are available for use in bulletins and at meetings:
http://www.caritas.org.au/
project_compassion_07/pdf/Reflections.pdf

3) Go to: http://www.caritas.org.au/
project_compassion_07/materials/parishes.html for parish activities and resources.

4) Caritas Australia is holding a Festival of Global Concern in April 2007. The Festival is for students from around Australia and New Zealand in Year 11 and 12 and their teachers who are interested in working for justice and peace, making the world a fairer place, and making poverty history! For more information go to: www.caritas.org.au/events/
festivalGlobalConcern.htm

5) To read more about Bangladesh, its people, location, population etc, go to http://cyberschoolbus.un.org/
infonation/index.asp?id=50

6) Go to http://www.grameen-info.org/ to read about the Grameen Bank and the way it is providing loans through microfinance.


  
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