Living in a middle-class urban society surrounded by slums and poverty-stricken people, various youth-led organisations aim to reduce the social problems of our society simply through philanthropic incentives derived from kindness, selflessness, and compassion.
Yearning Aches Foundation works on Pollution, Road safety, Food and nutrition, hygiene, and reducing the pains of poor people helping them in every possible way whenever they get the opportunity. They started their work by gathering 50tk (around 4 pennies) being inspired by a renowned charitable organisation ‘Jago Bangladesh’. The attitude that takes them forward is the linear yet complex dream that they can build a better society for their future generations to live in where there will be equality among people from all professions and classes as well as a place with very few to no social problems compared to the present situation in our developing country Bangladesh.
They state that they have been doing these activities because whenever they help the people of slums by gifting them food or clothes, the smiles that they get to see from those people empower them to do more, to do it once again. Whenever they complete events easing some of the factors of social problems, the happiness and joy that they get to see from the common people inspire them to work more.
The organisation, led by its Chairman Mahmud Hossain Amin, has completed around 7 large events in their 2 years-span after its initiation in 2018. In the initial events, they arranged week-long fundraising programs through their volunteers where they raised around 20,000tk (around 190 Pounds) in events and used those funds to buy clothes and food for the people living in slums around their area.
Their volunteers took the risk of going out during the lockdown for providing all the necessary food materials for 2 complete months during the lockdown to 3000 families who had lost their jobs and were empty during the Covid-19 pandemic throughout Bangladesh.
They have arranged programs regarding food safety where they provided proper food preparation materials to the roadside food hawkers and small food shops and created awareness among them as well as the customers regarding food hygiene and nutritional values to follow.
They have worked on pollution as Dhaka is one of the most polluted cities in the world, by providing free masks to pedestrians and creating awareness. During the times when Bangladesh was going through huge protests regarding the increased amount of street accidents, they went down on roads creating awareness amongst the public to use Zebra crossing, over-bridges, avoiding hazardous and careless road crossing etc. through posters/banners and also through speech.
They have also worked to make the slum areas much more cleaner and hygienic by inspiring people to keep them clean and providing materials needed for cleaning them. Awareness activities like staying home and following the lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic were also conducted by them online.
Regardless of the impact their work carries, the intrinsic inspiration coming from this organisation is beyond measurement for many youths. They started from nothing and now arrange different events regularly, have good recognition in the city, have an office for their paperwork and other activities. They tirelessly keep working in the attempt to make their organisation better and achieve what the society never thinks is possible for a young group like theirs. The assumed assurance for a better future life for any number of people in our country is what makes them truly satisfied with what they do.
The August issue of TDA, Youth in Philanthropy, intends to honour those youth-led organisations which are working selflessly to bring about a change in the society.
Approached by Md Tamhidul Islam