Departing for Bangladesh

My return to the blogosphere, after a 2 year absence For those of you interested in seeing archival blogs of my initial January, 2005 trip to Thailand in the wake of the tsunami ( maybe I should rethink that phraseology) the address is http://dncthailand2005.blogspot.com/ ;

after we launched our Katrina project I started
http://dnc-handsonusa.blogspot.com
but frankly haven't kept up since.

We've had great projects in Jogjakarta, Indonesia, and San Isidro, Philippines, both ably led by Marc Young. Although I participated in both ( got to keep my perfect record intact) Marc was clearly the prime mover, though as always the volunteers become the projects owners.

Looking back, in the Spring of 2007, I thought we had accomplished a lot, and proven the concept that if you make it easy for people to help one another, they'll do it. Recognizing this wellspring of untapped energy, and a strong personal belief that individuals sacrificing personally to help others has a special value, we decided to scale up Hands On.

A round of solicitation to a group I've dubbed the SuperFriends, who basically agreed to underwrite $200K in annual expense to cover 3-5 Operations Directors, and a Communications/FundRaising specialist, was completed over the next few months, and in the summer we added a third Operations Director, Bill Driscoll, Jr, and Paula Ogletree as Communications Director. This allowed us to have a stronger upfront message when we decided to deploy to Peru, and the additional exposure, and a well run project, brought over 300 volunteers within the first 3 months of operation - a phenomenal outpouring, and a powerful force in that recovering community.

We did assessments of several situations, a tornado in Kansas, the wildfires in California, and the serious flooding in Mexico in November, 2007, but felt they weren't "quite right".
Cyclone Sidr hit Bangladesh on November 15th, and caused devestation that matched Katrina in terms of houses destroyed. It's a challenging place to consider a project, since we can only be effective where volunteers want to be, so the outcome is uncertain. But with our expanded strength, and Peru in solid shape, it seems time to "take a look" at what we know will be a challenge.
I leave tomorrow at 9 AM, from Boston to London to Delhi to Dakha, arriving 27 hours later. Marc Young and Stef Chang will arrive, from Peru, about two days later. They are prudently doing the stop-in-NYC to get a Bangladesh visa approach, I'm trying the unapproved "visa on arrival" technique, which may become the "sorry, NO visa on arrival"... sort of like Charlie on the MTA for you Boston/Kingston trio fans.

I'm a bit nervous, but believe, as always, that we'll learn some useful things. And meet some new people. And hopefully allow more wonderful volunteers to do their thing.

Stay tuned

David Campbell Nov 26th, 2007