Bangladesh Shoebox Appeal

Dimensions has been supporting the Bangladesh Charity, Glory Friendship Social Welfare Organisation (GFSWO), for the past three years. GFSWO works to provide education for over 2000 pupils within four schools based in the poverty-stricken areas of Korail, Manda and Gandaria in Dhaka, Bangladesh. At Christmas time, we held a shoebox appeal to provide stationery items for the children who attend the schools, to help support them with their education.

The schools are run by local Bangladeshi teachers, most of whom were once students at the school and have been able to go into further education and return to the schools to teach. The schools rely completely on donations and support through sponsorship to keep running, as it costs £6 per month to educate one child. This fee includes a daily hot meal, text books, pens, pencils, school rent and teacher salaries.

The team at the Dimensions Castle Donington site managed to fill a fantastic 245 shoeboxes, consisting of items such as stationery, colouring books, calculators and pencil cases.

To further support the schools, during the month of December 2015 we were given a selection of handicrafts to sell in our canteen. These included Christmas decorations, table cloths and bedding which had all been hand embroidered by some of the children. From the £176 raised, 70% of the money will go directly to the girls who made them, and the remaining 30% will go back to the schools so that they can purchase more materials for handicrafts.

The shoeboxes arrived at the schools at the end of February and we were really pleased to hear that the children were thrilled with all of their new stationery! They even sent us a video and photos as a way of thanking us for our donations.