I have been given an incredible opportunity to take time off work and start 2019 off right with a humanitarian trip to Bangladesh. Let's give you a little background before this trip begins.
read more "Hope Humanitarian: Bangladesh; Rohingya Refugees"
I'd been looking for and praying to find a company to do a humanitarian trip with. Finding one that does good work, for a decent price, and works with local in country companies is hard and takes time. The ones I usually travel with cater to the younger crowd and I was hoping to find something with people a tad bit older. My journey this last year had been hard as everything I thought I found or aligned fell through.
Planning my own trip to Guatemala... volcano explodes
Waiting for the annual Thanksgiving Proof trip... they postpone to March
Decide to go to Haiti over Thanksgiving... they cancel it
Find a cool company... they have no current trips scheduled
Find a friend doing Haiti over Christmas, decide to go.... she decided to switch and not go
Basically... I was like what is happening. I just want to serve and do a trip but can't make it align.
Then, Hope Humanitarian posts about a trip in February. This is a company Ben told me about and I was super excited about it...small, meaningful, uses local volunteer companies, funds projects not overhead, not too expensive, good morals, great people... yup, super excited. The problem... they were going in February... when I had school, however, I felt strongly about this and decided there had to be a way. Then it hit, I had an entire refugee unit I wrote last year and this project was working with refugees! I began to draft a letter to my district superintendents and principal to just ask... 90% of me figured there was no way they would say yes but the 10% said I needed to at least try. So I turned it in... and they said YES! Thank you amazing school district for giving me and my students this amazing opportunity.
So... I am going to Bangladesh to work in the Rohingya refugee camps. Have you heard about the genocide in Myanmar? I hadn't either. So we better start off by giving you a little background.
The company: http://hopehumanitarian.info/
There are one million people who have fled for their lives, fled from a massacre, fled from their villages being burned, fled from their women being raped, fled from their children being burned alive, fled from the worst possible things that could happen in their lives. And now, there are one million people waiting in the camps, waiting for a new home, waiting for hope, waiting for help and safety, waiting for a miracle.
How can you help? Donations are being collected for our projects here:
Every little bit helps. Skip a movie this week, $16, take a break from going out to dinner, $17, skip the morning latte, $4, forego the pedicure, $20, and donate to help those in dire need. The funds go directly to the people and projects not the volunteers, not the overhead of the company. Together, we can make a difference, together we can help those in need, together we can love one another.
