If you are looking for direction, consider committing each day of your life from here on out to the singular goal of eliminating seasonal hunger in Bangladesh. Monga affects mostly the northern Upazilas, most severely between Sept-Oct and more mildly between June-July. It occurs when there is a lessening of purchasing power and food reserves before the harvest cycles. The Freedom Foundation here in Dhaka is working out a means of financing "rice banks" in villages, where communities can set aside rice for the lull seasons. The system has to be synchronized just right, or else people will starve. We take food for granted, but reading British accounts of the 1943 famine, I encountered descriptions of people dying in large numbers because the harvest came only a few weeks too late.
We can set up a program on our campus to collaborate with the Freedom Foundation in Dhaka to raise awareness about and get people all over the US and Canada involved in coming up with a way to set up a sustainable rice bank system that can be financed (so it doesn't have to rely on outside funds). I am working on a grant proposal to study the rice bank system next summer, and I'll try to learn as much as I can about the process in the coming weeks.
The people solving these problems in Bangladesh are not super heroes, they are not even geniuses. They are exactly like us, no more or less capable than we are. They have just realized how much they can do while the rest us are only just opening our eyes to all this. I visited the FF headquarters today and spoke to Safi Khan, head of the organization. He is an amazing, dynamic and highly motivated Bangladeshi American who is really committed to what he is doing.
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