Hey Taco Potato Readers – I just wanted to share news on a little fundraising campaign I just started for an organization I have worked with in Bangladesh. Folks who only know me for my automotive and sandwich related endeavors might not know that I did a lot of work overseas in the past, including spending the summer of 2012 working on human rights advocacy in Bangladesh. I served as a “Peace Fellow” for the DC-based organization the Advocacy Project and was paired with a grassroots human rights and education focused organization called the Subornogram Foundation. I documented my time there through a blog on the Advocacy Project’s website which you can find here.

During my time in Bangladesh, I began a close friendship with the Foundation’s founder and executive director, Shahed Kayes. In the years since, we’ve worked on a few different projects together, including raising funds for relief efforts in the wake of the Savar garment factory building collapse in 2013 and funds to help the organization purchase the land on which one of their schools was built, on Mayadip Island in 2015 (both of these fundraisers were completed on Rockethub and the links are no longer active but I can try to find more details on those and update this post).

Politically-motivated charges against Shahed, related to his past human rights campaigns, and the myriad challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, have made it extremely difficult for the Foundation to sustain the schools it runs. Our objective here is to help them with enough funds to keep four schools open through summer 2022 and give them some breathing room while they seek out longer-term funding sources. You can find more information in the campaign linked below. Feel free to leave a comment here on the blog or reach out via the Go Fund Me site if you have any detailed questions. Every little bit helps. Thanks for your time and support!

https://www.gofundme.com/f/river-gypsy-childrens-education-in-bangladesh