Elly and Mart, 27 January 2012
Bangladesh , Patuakhali 27°

TWO TO GO!!!

It is time to give you the state of affairs regarding last month’s drive. We are very happy that many of you were immediately ready to sponsor a child of Shoula village in Bangladesh to go to Primary School. You are really making a difference! By now those joining have received the details of ‘their’ sponsor child.

Áll pre-primary children started Primary School from January 2012, although we are still looking for sponsorship for 2 of them. So when you did not read last month’s blog yet, or when you did not make up your mind to join yet, please consider these 2. They would love to be Sun Children too.

By now we transferred the money for the first 6 months. Next installment will be after we received the first reports.
In 2010 we started to sponsor 23 Sun Children and now 27 new ones have joined, so the total of children sponsored through Perspective 3000 is now mounted up to 50. The total Sun Child Program in Shoula supports 671 Children! [ in 2010 the number of children was still 418] In the meantime 164 out of them are in High School.

As a Sun Child:
He/she will go to school and receive a school uniform, schoolbooks, a yearly medical check-up and treatment when necessary. He/she will be in a daily tuition class as well.
Their mothers are joined in savings-groups, which means they learn how to save money, learn about the importance of school education and will get useful tips about raising their children. They discuss about the way they want to spent the savings to increase their income and ideas are exchanged about small businesses that were set-up with success.


In 2011 we gave the 6 poorest families an extra mother’s day gift. Another 7th family, of which the father suddenly died, was given the same later. All 7 families bought a pregnant cow who will increase their income as soon as the calf is born, when there will be milk to sell. The calf can be sold later. Many sponsors are doing something extra like this for the family of ‘their’ sponsor child.

Together these 7 families form a new savings group, because they also received an extra amount as micro-credit. The first family that used this credit was Ayub and Sabina’s mother. She bought 2 cows and 2 calf. The remaining money will be used to make a cowshed and to purchase an extra piece of land. The 2 DCI/RSC staff members in Shoula will guide the process. DCI/RSC are the NGO’s that carry out the program.

There are 52 Tutors in the field. They observe how the children in their group are doing and discuss any problems that might arise, s.a. school drop-out threat.
We will receive a report of the 50 Sun Children supported via Perspective 3000 twice a year. Of course each sponsor will be forwarded this.

Together with Salam, Mart and I will take care that the program will be running smoothly in future. Both DCI and RSC indicated that they would like our contribution in this very much. At the moment they list their training needs. By the end of 2012 we are planning to start with realizing [a part of] this. We can judge the progress by that time ourselves and hope to be able to continue our effort on a yearly basis, as long as we keep healthy and/or the need is there.
Once again, thank you for being with us and please keep writing!
Elly and Mart