Youth in Action

Spreading Warmth Among The Underpriviledged

Mostafa Shabuj

When winter starts in our country, everyone starts to celebrate it in different ways. People start making different kinds of “pithas”. Most of us love sleeping late inside the warmth of our blankets and love standing next to warm sources like kitchen stove or burning leaves. How we love taking a cup of smoke emitting hot tea in the mornings.

However, majority of the people in this country, who live below poverty line and acquire two meals a day with much difficulty, do not have the privilege to enjoy winter like us. On December 7, 2011, when the first cold wave hit the nation and the temperature went below 10 degree celsius, several young students of Govt A H College, Bogra, who run an active organisation by the name of "The Daily Star Reader's Club," collected money for the underprivileged who have no warm clothes to face winter.

With a small gesture, students of Government A H College made a huge difference.

Our purpose was to distribute cosy clothes among the winter stricken people. At the very outset of the first cold wave, the students sold flowers to the passengers with a message of standing by the chill-afflicted people, stopping different kinds of vehicles on the front highway of Govt A H College, Bogra. The passengers on rickshaws and cars bought flowers for Tk 5 to Tk 500. They praised this noble deed as well. Students sold flowers to the passengers of vehicles, shopkeepers and to the standing pedestrians for four days at a stretch.

Teachers of Govt A H College, Bogra, from different departments, co-operated with the students with selling flowers. The students accumulated a total of Tk 40 thousand. Students have purchased a total of 161 blankets of standard quality and 20 mats spending Tk 30 thousand. The students then went to the alluvial land (Char land) of the rivers- Bangali and Jamuna under Sonatala upzilla in Bogra. They went from home to home, and looked for people who needed the warm clothes and blankets the most. Two days earlier the distribution, tokens were given to people. A list of selected people was made. The people were requested to gather at an open place of Shimultala belonging to Satbaki villege under Sonatola upzilla with the given tokens. Priorities were given to mothers, babies, aged-old persons, physically challenged and widows.