Care Across Communities

Care Across Communities on a mission to build a better and fairer world by focussing on helping communities in developing countries. Their mission is delivered through a series of programmes covering poverty alleviation, water and sanitation, health, education and empowerment of women. They are a UK registered charity founded in 2021, with hubs in Bangladesh and Uganda.

The charity was founded by Surrey-based Illina, an International Politics and Human rights graduate and experienced social researcher and campaigner, who just wanted to make a difference to people in developing countries in need of care and love. As a very small charity, they have limited resources and rely on volunteers so that they can spend most of their income directly on projects in developing countries.

Just one of the projects the charity runs is an education programme in rural Bangladesh, focussing on the children of extremely poor and marginalised tea plantation workers. A community descended from Indian migrants during the British Colonial period, the tea workers in this region remain trapped in a poverty cycle with low pay, poor housing and facilities and reduced educational prospects.

As a community the tea-workers require specific care and support to help achieve a level of social mobility that would enable them to escape from poverty and work towards a better future, and education is the most important factor in achieving this. Care Across Communities want to help children in this community to gain their literacy knowledge smoothly and encourage them not to drop out from schooling at Primary level. One way they are doing this is by distributing stationary such as bags, pencil cases, pens etc. that would be otherwise unaffordable for their families.

Through the implementation of this project and the awareness programmes, adults within the community also get support for sustainable community development through the practice of their literacy.

A grant from the Matthew Good Foundation will provide school stationery products including bags, exercise copies, pens, pencils, sharpeners, erasers etc. to 230 children at the Premnagar Tea Garden Primary School, whose parents are all active or retired tea workers.