Friends bring businesses to aid needy Bangladeshi people

When Bangleshi authorities prepared to enforce a nationwide lockdown in late March, three friends fretted: How would rickshaw drivers, factory workers and or working poor people survive?

With only 20,000 takas ($236) in hand, ir challenge was to channel resources from generous haves to desperate have-ts. y started making appeals for money.

first response came from Bangleshi cricket star Shakib Al Hasan who donated 2 million takas ($24,000). With that, y began distributing food packs in impoverished neighborhoods in Dhaka.

Eventually, y succeeded in bringing about 120 organizations and business houses under one umbrella for ir aid campaign, Mission Save Banglesh. ir work has since expanded to helping families fighting cancer and to arranging supplies of masks and sanitizers.

“People are so generous! y responded to our calls from ir hearts,” said Imran Kir, who founded campaign with friends Tajdin Hasan and Imtiaz Halim. Kir spoke with Associated Press as he and or volunteers visited a cancer hospital in Dhaka to distribute food packs.

“We started distributing food packs in impoverished neighborhoods in Dhaka with initial funds that came from Shakib Al Hasan,” said Kir, 32. “Slowly we expanded our reach outside capital city.”

Banglesh’s leing exporter, garment industry, has been hit hard by pandemic, and so have its 4 million low-paid workers. industry reports that orders worth more than $3 billion have been canceled or suspended.

Bangleshi development ncy BRAC said incomes of about 51 percent of country’s rickshaw drivers, 58 percent of factory workers, 66 percent of hotel and restaurant workers and 62 percent of day laborers in n-agricultural sectors have been reduced to zero since lockdown began.

Businesses have reopened but recovery would take time.

Many companies channeled money from ir corporate social responsibility funds to Mission Save Banglesh.

“Till w we have raised about $230,000. This is very inspiring,” Kir said.

group provided food packs to about 13,000 families and ar 60,000 individuals. It provided an ambulance to a group to help families cremate or bury people who died of coronavirus.

In a cancer hospital in Dhaka, volunteers brought food packs for two weeks for patients, most of whom came from vills.

Abdullah Biswas, a far of a cancer patient in a specialized cancer hospital in Dhaka, was happy to get food packs.

“We came here from Shariatpur,” an area that flooded this year, Biswas said. “We are in serious financial crisis. This aid will help us a lot.”

Slum dwellers were similarly thrilled to receive aid from volunteers.

“We are delighted. As we are out of work, we have been facing a lot of difficulties to survive with our children,” said Nurjahan Begum, a resident of a slum in Dhaka’s Kalabagn area.

“We pray for well-being of aid givers and hope to get more help. We will give m blessings as long as we are alive,” she said.