Small Actions Often Have The Biggest Impact: Stories of Kindness

Kindness Matters: 50 inspiring stories of Empathy, Compassion and Kindness is a book with 50 stories of kindness, strength, resilience and community and altruism from youth, organizations, entrepreneurs and more. An excerpt from Ammu A WOMAN’S FIGHT TO CHANGE THE FATE OF CHILDREN OF SEX WORKERS, Bangladesh.

Hazera Begum was all of seven when she ran away from home after a clash with her stepmother. Her own mother had died giving birth to her younger brother. Her father, a fisherman incapable of feeding his children, had to remarry. But the stepmother refused to give them food or care. Unable to tolerate her any longer, Hazera fled, fell asleep on a bus and woke up on the other end of Dhaka, in Gulistan.

For the next few years, as she made her way as a street child, she was bought and sold many times, first for domestic work and finally, at the age of eleven, for prostitution.

Life continued to be nightmarish for Hazera, who worked as a sex worker in brothels and on the streets until the age of twenty-three.

Things finally began to take a turn for the better for her when she encountered someone from CARE, an international non-profit organization. An industrious woman, Hazera had over the years tried her best to skill herself in crafts and pick up basic education, and she quickly managed to get a job with them.

It was Durjoy, another organization for sex workers, which set Hazera off on her journey of working with children of sex workers. Under the Durjoy project, she was given the responsibility of taking care of children of sex workers and over time, she began to form an affinity with them. So, when the funded child centre run by Durjoy shut down, she frantically began to find a way to take care of these kids and give them a future. While she never wanted to have a child of her own, she worried for the kind of future she’d be able to give them. She was determined to care for the ones around her.

‘I told myself that I will do something for these kids so that they can do what I could not,’ says Hazera.

With the contribution of a few students of Jahangirnagar University and her life savings of about 8,00,000 taka (approximately $10,000), she started Shishuder Jonno Aamra (SJA), which translates to ‘we are for the children’, and registered it with the government’s Social Welfare Department.

The shelter began in June 2010 in Savar, a suburb of the capital, with twenty-five children. Then in 2011, the shelter was shifted to Adabar area of the capital Dhaka.

Most girls living with their mothers in the sex trade end up being part of the trade themselves, while the boys often resort to a life of drug trade and extortion. Hazera’s aim was to change this by making sure the girls completed their higher education and boys were trained in vocations for better job opportunities as electricians, drivers and more. But the challenge has been far greater. Many opposed her vision. Institutes refused to enrol the children simply because they came from the brothels, but Hazera refused to give up. Slowly, things started to improve.

Today, Hazera is the mother of forty-six children, and her initiative is being run primarily by donations from some humanitarian people, some students, three trust organizations and one charity organization. Although the organization (SJA) is registered with the government’s social welfare department, they are not receiving any government donations.

‘She is not just my mother; she is my best friend,’ said Fatema, a fourth-grade student who came to the shelter in 2013.

Like Fatema, all other children are extremely fond of Hazera, who dotes on each one of them equally (although she does admit to taking extra care of her daughters, especially after they have grown up).

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With the expense of renting and growing the shelter in the capital, Hazera now endeavours to buy a larger space so she can bring in more children.

Hazera’s kindness is reflected in the love that she receives from not only the children who call her Ammu but also their biological mothers and everyone else whose lives she has touched. As the biological mother of one of Hazera’s children puts it, ‘I gave birth, so what? The one who takes care is far greater.’

Excerpted with permission from Kindness Matters: 50 inspiring stories of Empathy, Compassion and Kindness, a co-publication ofUNESCO MGIEP.

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