The Youth teams will be divided into groups of 3-4 UK volunteers who will work alongside, 10 local Bangladeshi youth volunteers, 3-4 student volunteers in groups of 16-18. The groups teams will work in different areas Southwest, Northwest and Chittagong Hill Tracts each with a different theme. Each team will help to run projects in one village based on a theme:
South West: The programme here will focus around strengthening primary health care by engaging young people and linking relevant organisations.
North West: The programme here will help to create a cooperative for dairy marketing and enhancing livelihoods.
Chittagong Hill tracts: The programme here will focus on engaging young people in development of the community and improving water access.
Each programme will be designed to build on the work of the previous cycles. The first cycles of volunteers will primarily be conducting research and mapping to create plans of action in particular areas such as, water and sanitation, dairy cooperatives and primary health care. The January cycle will implement the plans in the community, and the March cycle will evaluate the impact and success of the work. Support and training will be provided through VSOB’s partnership with the University of Dhaka.
The teams take time out to review their work:
Read an update from the volunteers working on the projects in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.
Arriving in Bangladesh two months ago was completely surreal. Going from miserly, grey, old Gatwick to bright, vibrant, noisy Dhaka was utterly brilliant! The city is huge, every street is crammed with rickshaws and it’s never, ever quiet. The first time we went out on the streets was to a market near our hostel where they were selling colourful scarves and bags of rice bigger than me and vegetables all arranged in freakishly neat piles. We attracted quite a lot of attention and by the time we got home we were surrounded a swarm of children chasing each other around and shouting ‘bidishi’! It means ‘foreigner’ in Bangla and is a word we hear a lot out here! I’m not sure that I’ve ever felt quite so conspicuous in my life, but although having people gawp unashamedly at us was strange at first it matters less and less now, especially because I’ve realised that people are just curious about us, which is quite nice really. People like to ask you which country you’re from, where you’re going, what your father does for a living, if you like it in Bangladesh, if you like chillies, if you would like to buy a duck!!!
The first drive into CHT was amazing. The views are beautiful; deep green valley’s drop off from either side of 
the mountain roads and you can spot tiny houses hidden between the trees as you look down. I forget sometimes about how huge and lovely the scenery is, as we’re in it every day, but then one day I’ll be in a hilltop area of the village and be able to see the mountains swooping up and down in the distance and the sun shining off the watery paddy fields and remember how great it all is! The village we are working in is called Satvaiya Para and is a Marma community. The culture in CHT is quite different to the rest of Bangladesh, as this area is mainly populated by people from indigenous ethnic groups such as Marma, Chakma and Tripura. Most of these ethnic groups are Buddhist (some are Hindu) and their languages, styles of dress and many other cultural markers are completely distinct from one another, making this area an intriguing place to get to know.
The local languages are brilliant – although the people here are so very relaxed and happy the language does not sound that way! There have been a few times when I’ve crept out of my room wondering why my host mother could possibly be so angry with someone, to see her sitting round the table with her friends laughing! We live with a Chakma family who are so lovely – our host mother is always smiling and the first thing she taught us when we arrived in her home was ‘hebe?’ meaning would you like to eat this, and ‘hem’ meaning I will eat this, which kind of set the tone for our time there! There is a constant parade of delicious food shuffling along our table, lots of spicy beef, tiny prawns, cinnamon tea, fried chilli snacks and coconut cakes. In fact cake features in daily life quite heavily, as do small miscellaneous fruits, we seem to be offered them at every turn!
Our projects in Satvaiya Para mainly focus on water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH), though we are also working
on improving homestead gardens and procuring funding for a road to be built to the village. The last batch of volunteers oversaw the provision of 60 sets of materials for sanitary latrines to the village, and the installation of 14 of those. We aim to have the rest of these installed by the time we leave our placement and so are planning a big community action day, where teams of local volunteers spread out across the village to compete to install as many latrines in a day as we can. Sort of like a latrine-based sports day! Part of creating a ‘model village’ involves encouraging people to reflect on and assess their own needs, so that they will be able to communicate them better and act to combat them in the future. As such we have formed a WaSH committee, which the Karbari (village headman) is a member of, and through visits and discussions with local institutions we aim to create better, more supportive linkages between small communities and local government.
Working with the youth group, the Sassna Club, has been a brilliant part of this whole experience. All of the members are so loud and funny, they’re such positive people and they really care about their village. It’s great 
to work with them all, and to be making friends with fantastic people whose lives are so different from my own. They’ve taken us on some great trips out, to a beautiful mountainside picnic spot and an amazing (if surreal) monk’s funeral that was more like a village fete! To warn you now, if you are planning to come out here come prepared with as many songs and dances as you can muster. We’ve often been faced with joyful bellows of ‘YES! An English song now!’ and stared at each other in panic, and then lamely resorted to a mumbled rendition of several Beatles songs all at once because we can’t remember the words - to then be completed outdone by the all local volunteers enthusiastically singing about 12 different Marma songs!
The past two months here in Bangladesh have been nothing like anything I’ve done before, and nothing like how I expected! When I was imagining what it would be like to come to Bangladesh I thought about meeting new people and seeing new things, but I was so busy feeling smug about the next big adventure that I didn’t realise that the best bits were going to be the little things, like talking to my host mother as she cooks rotis in our outdoor kitchen or watching the local boys practice traditional Marma dancing in a rice field. I think that may be the best thing about this whole trip: although some parts are more difficult than I imagined, there are so many little bits that are fantastic that I couldn’t have anticipated!
