The COIDCHRONICLEJune 2016

Building schools, bringing hope

CO-OPERATION IN DEVELOPMENTPh: 1300 731 916

Cyclone Roanu has bat-tered the vulnerable delta region of Bangladesh but left CO-ID’s infrastructure

almost untouched. 500,000 were evacuated to emergency shelters, which now dot the low-lying coastal region, but an estimated 24 died, including three on Bhola Island. By Australian stand-ards, the cyclone was minor—with winds peaking be-low 100 kmh in the Bhola region, but even storm winds pose a severe threat to over 75% of houses in the region, made in kacha (made of materials such as mud, grass, bamboo or sticks) and semi-pacca style (made only in part from more resistant materials). The region has come ahead in leaps and bounds in defend-ing itself against cyclones with mass-distributed SMS messages and multi-storey concrete structures offering locals a fighting chance. The great Bhola Cyclone of 1970 claimed some 500,000 lives, while similar storms in recent years have claimed casualties at less than 1% that rate, despite significant population increases.

If you are interested in keeping up with CO-ID events on Twitter, we now have our own Twitter account, @CO-ID_Bangladesh The account is maintained by CO-ID chair Olav

Muurlink and will be updated regularly. We are also on Facebook. Search for Fred Hyde’s Helpers.

Fred update

Cyclone Roanu Brilliant results

A proud headmaster and students at a remote CoID school

Results of the 2016 exams are now in and rarely has a spreadsheet made more exciting reading. Once again 100% of the CO-ID students sitting the end-of-primary school exams passed (that’s become the norm, but certain-ly isn’t the norm at government-run schools!) . Overall, our students scored an astonishing 78% in the exams, including 9 near-perfect A+ results. While the results are good, buried in the figures are signs that we really do need to improve the support and training for teachers at some schools. Our best school, Abdullah-pur school, which is supported by the Canberra community, scored an astonishing 7 of the total 9 A+ results, with the balance of students getting As, suggesting that with the right mix of training, support and personnel, we can do much better. Abdullah-pur is also one of our handful of schools that has a pre-school, showing the value of having the right level of support and infrastructure.

Anyone who has had a working life over of 80 years plus finds it…well, hard to retire, and I don’t think Fred Hyde AM ever envisaged a retirement featuring golf buggies or cruise ships. There’s no doubt in my mind Fred’s mind is both willing and capable, but his body has said ‘enough’—at least to 50 hour commutes to Bhola Island. He is now dependent 24 hours a day on a bottle of oxygen, which literally restricts his movement, but he is getting support from the CO-ID community in Warwick, notably treasurer Geraldine O’Neill, who visits regularly, and local medico Dr Blair Koppen which is allowing him to continue to live at home.

We are on Twitter

This is an organisation built to Fred’s specifications. While technically I have stepped into Fred’s shoes in taking over the ‘field director’s’ role (in reality, the whole committee has pitched in to make that possible), his shoes really are too large to fill (even though I’m 6’ 4” and with feet to match). Fred’s knowledge, built up over decades, is so subtle that even though I have spent some 20 years work-ing with Fred and lis-tening to Fred, it will take…well 20 years to catch up. Since Fred’s retire-ment I’ve been over to Bhola twice, and fel-low committee mem-ber Pat O’Leary has been over there also for a month, soaking up knowledge. Both Paddy and I have day jobs—my ‘day’ job is as a senior lecturer in organisational behaviour at Central Queensland University, and the uni has been kind enough to give me time out in addition to my holidays to spend over in Bhola. With time at a premium, I threw myself into the deep end, spending 14 hour days and seven day weeks, and I was truly blessed to remain healthy enough (other than re-sembling an exotic tropical fruit due to 40 degree temperatures not agreeing with my pink skin) to be able to plough on for 30 days and 30 nights without my usual trip to the hospital... I’m afraid I don’t have Fred’s constitution. The rapid advance of some parts of Bangladesh, notably the banking sys-tem and the internet, is allowing us to get a quicker, better grip on facts and figures in Bangladesh. In the past, Fred

had to rely on (very) snailish snail mail or crackly phone lines to get messages back and forth to Australia…now we can have daily email contact. This has opened up the possibility of some changes that I think will be pivotal to CO-ID. For example, we are now able to recruit teachers in a way that closely resembles ‘best practice’ in Australia. Each school now sports

a sign calling for appli-cations all year round, linked to a special email account in Australia. This year we shortlisted 27 of the best candi-dates (on paper) and interviewed them with Bangladeshi commit-tee members, Borhan Shafi, Iqbal Faruque and Bushra Khanum present, as well as myself, my interpreter, and a senior member of the CO-ID Char Fasson staff. Each candidate also sat for an hour-long exam, devised

by Iqbal (who is a highly regarded cur-riculum specialist in the NT education system). Using panel scores and exam results we were able to select some re-ally high quality candidates. One of the big differences between our schools and other schools in Bangladesh is that our schools can recruit on quality alone…even the desperately poor can ‘afford’ to get a job at COID—whereas buying a job is something of the norm in countries like Bangladesh. (I think this is one of the reasons why CO-ID is winning in the quality stakes when it comes to exam results (see story other side).

Olav Muurlink,

chair, management commitee, Co-operation in Development

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CONTACT DETAILSPostal: CO-ID, PO Box 1061, Warwick, 4370

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Remembering CO-ID in your willPreparing your will is never a partic-ular ‘fun’ life event, but at least when you think about the things your legacy could do, it makes the job a little more bearable. If you would like to include CO-ID in your will, you can be reassured that your legacy will have real impact...and the following wording is the correct way to ensure that happens: I give to Co-operation In Development (Australia) Association Incorporated of P.O. Box 1061,

Warwick, Queensland, a charitable organisation incorporated in Queensland under the Association Incorporation Act 1981, the amount of AUD$............. for its general, educational and charitable purposes in caring and educating children and I declare that the receipt of the treasurer or other proper officer of the Association will be a good and sufficient discharge to my executors.

The refurbished East Jahanpor school (sponsored by Melbourne school St Leonard’s with the new kinder in the foreground, and also stairs and new ‘bricked up’ walls of the school in the background. Inset: students sitting at desks balanced on a new solid concrete floor.

What needs to be done...project to refurbish underwaythe cost of repairing school furni-ture mounting on an island where good wood is hard to find. As

for necessity, there have been accidents with chil-dren falling off broken or unbalanced furniture, caused by the lumpy and slippery mud floors that are a feature of CO-ID’s original school plan.

However, the refurbishment project is not going to be smooth sailing.

“The drop in the Aussie dollar and the fall in the interest rates have been welcomed by many Australians, but not by us,” says CO-ID treasurer Geraldine O’Neill. “We need to find around $160,000 on top of running expenses for the project to finish the refurbishments off, and we have a long way to go before we reach that tar-get.”

During his trip to Bhola, Paddy visited over 20 of the schools, travelling either on motorbike or one of the increasingly common electric-powered three-wheelers found on the island. Amongst the surprises was watching the installation of one of the nine new toilet blocks donated to CO-ID by the Dhaka Ahsania Mission (DAM). “They are really impressive, with showers and even genera-tors, and from our perspective, the really useful thing was that they also have in places installed new tube wells, which are good for the whole community,” says Paddy. The toilets are being installed at no cost to CO-ID, and are amongst a number of Bangladesh-based CO-ID initiatives that underline the respect the charity has in the local community.

Paddy says the refurbishment plan is doing wonders for the morale of teachers and students alike. “These buildings are extremely basic by Australian standards, but they are very proud of them,” he says. “Look, I was proud too. Visiting there helped me understand how we do what we do—Fred has set this up to run on the smell of an oily rag, so that every dollar goes into that bot-tom line of education... And I guess it also helps me understand what needs to be done.”

cont’d from previous page

printing of the Chronicle

donated by the Warwick

RSL Club

Printing

donated by

the Warwick

RSL Club

Chair’s report

Some of Co-ID schools are built beside primitive medical clinics, and when I was visiting, I just quickly dropped into one to have a look inside. Very limited facili-ties. The young paramedic was measuring the skinfold fat of the little kids some young mothers have brought in. He had a little tape measure marked green and red and yellow which he wrapped around their upper arms…if the children were in green zone they were fine, if in the red, severely malnour-ished, and in the yellow, moderately malnourished. The little child he measured while I was there… moderately malnourished. It’s a good reminder that Co-ID is working in very tough region’s, the truly needy.

One...small...cup of coffee...one...giant*...step for a CoID child

* One small cup of coffee = almost two month’s of full-time education for a

COID student...all expenses paid.

Working with the most vulnerable