Ahsania Mission Children City (AMCC), located in Panchgarh, is a specialized institution of Dhaka Ahsania Mission (DAM) dedicated toward the integrated & comprehensive development of most-vulnerable & disadvantaged street children of Bangladesh who live and depend on streets financially. Currently, the number of children living in AMCC permanent residence is 200.
Situation of working children in Bangladesh
It is evident from the example of developed welfare societies in the world that to build a prosperous future, the most important thing is to ensure appropriate nurturing of younger generation. UNCRC recognizes that every child is entitled to a standard of living adequate for the child’s physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development. Article 17 of the Constitution of Bangladesh also recognizes the right to education for all including the disadvantaged children. However, the growing number of street children is still on a rising trend.
According to the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, there were over 1.5 million street children in Bangladesh in 2015. With further estimates suggesting this could rise to 1.6 million by 2024. About 3.18 million children age-range 5-7 years in Bangladesh are involved in works for their survival. They haven’t two meals a day. They are involved into odd jobs like garbage collector, street vendor, porter, begging and other hazardous works for their survival. Other than that, Family problem, Economic insolvency, abusive parenting, unknown identity, broken family, running away, none to look after are some of the prior condition that brought forth a term like, “Street Children”, which is now a major concern of the policy makers and planners of the national government at large and NGOs in particular..
Unfortunately, deep down inside, Bangladesh is still a country where poverty cling to every obstacle. Street children condition here is no different as a situation. The after math of this status is, a portion of vagrant children who live an insecure life full of physical and sexual abuse by adults of the immediate community; trafficking. Extensive criminal networking: commercial sex work, smuggling, stealing, and the distribution of drugs and weapons; harassment by law enforcing agencies; no, or inadequate, access to educational institutions and healthcare facilities; and lack of decent employment opportunity, abuse & exploitation.
AMCC in Historical Imprints
Our imprints and purpose is intertwined in an uncomplicated nature which embarked from a vision of our pioneer Kazi Rafiqul Alam. A vision of having a peaceful & equal piece of earth for the disadvantaged street children where they can dream limitlessly and work toward those.
The curious behind-the-scene journey of AMCC started by conducting a small child situation study on 60 children from Dhaka, Chittagong, Rajshahi & 17 child-home answering 28 burning questions on socio-political situation of Bangladeshi street children in the year 2011. We were alarmed getting to know about the misery of children living on the streets and the unprecedented fight they are giving for survival, while not even getting to earn two square meals a day in return of their labor. We also collected sufficient secondary data from the government directories of Department of Social Services, Government Ministry of Women and Children Affairs & from a range of willful child networking organizations & social welfare volunteers.
This led to our discovery of a rehabilitation program that is unique from other shelter-homes and child centers with a full potential to become an iconic program rooted toward most-vulnerable and disadvantaged children’s development and a draft strategy that actually offers a sustainable solution of ‘streetism’. Without delaying, we arranged a two-day long workshop with 23 child organizations to discuss and finalize the draft action plan. The initial planning was comprised of a significant education curriculum and life-skill trainings, without proving any particular residential support.
According to the outlined sequence, we rented a small space at Panchgarh and started operating in July, 2012. This grabbed attention from Kindernot Hilfe (KNH)- a German INGO who after a comprehensive evaluation, decided to temporarily fund a pilot project for a year (December, 2012-13). With the knowledge taken from our pilot project and with the timely funding extension from KNH, AMCC took its baby steps toward its first concrete five-year project, ‘Integrated Development Program for Most Vulnerable and Disadvantaged Street Children (IDP-MVDSC)’ from June, 2014 to May, 2019. This first-hand experience of working directly with street-children for a long period of time opened up opportunities of monitoring and evaluating the government & other actor’s overall developmental approach toward the targeted audience and invisible loopholes in between achieving our results.
In 2018, with our constant ally, KNH-Germany, we conducted a Child Right situation Analysis (CRSA) to measure the outcomes and soon after, launched the second project of AMCC, ‘Disadvantaged Children’s Rehabilitation, Empowerment & Advancement Mission (DREAM-I)’ from June, 2019-May, 2021. The same year, we inaugurated the second building of AMCC with support of KNH-Germany and P&G. This lead to another dimension of advancement in the grounds of our programme management, strategic specification, sustainability, relationship with donor etc.; furthermore, evolving into todays AMCC.
Our Future Vision
Going against the tide, Dhaka Ahsania Mission (DAM) established Ahsania Mission Children City (AMCC) 10 year ago, in July 1st, 2012 with an ideology to rehabilitate most vulnerable street children and allowing them to grow within an enabling environment where they can unleash their latent social energy and exhibit their potentials and creativity.
Ahsania Mission Children City envisions to comprise 10 children cities in Bangladesh for 10,000 destitute children. Each of the cities will be able to capacitate 1000 children and will have self-sustained infrastructure to provide full time residential accommodation and produce food requirement for the total number of enrolled children.