Alone again

Wilson is only four, but spends countless days without adult supervision, with just his brother and sister for company in their ethnic minority village.

The children live in Bangladesh’s north-west region of Birampur with their parents, who rely on seasonal work as day labourers for the family’s daily existence. Wilson’s older brother Dennis belongs to World Vision’s child sponsorship programme.

With both parents working in the field, the children’s grandmother looks after them when she can, but she also has to farm, so the trio are often left on their own, generating feelings of insecurity in the absence of parental care.

When home alone, Wilson plays with his sister Serapina and feeds her rice. For meals, the family eats rice, curry and bread, but their severe poverty means they lack nutritious food. The family eats fish twice a week, but other meats only about four times a year. Usually they have three meals a day, but sometimes they eat only twice.

A paucity of suitable clothes and inadequate shelter also affect the children, who suffer health problems due to poor sanitation and unsafe drinking water.

Although their financially stricken circumstances affect every aspect of life, Wilson’s father hasn’t given up hope. Of his youngest son, he says, “We’ll try to help him become a police officer when he grows up.”

The family is fighting to bring solvency to their lives – but their hard work is not enough. As the parents can only work for two seasons a year and their living costs outstrip their slender income, they are unable to meet their family’s basic needs.

Aware of the household, who share one room in a mud-walled home with steel sheeting for a roof, World Vision’s local team is searching for opportunities for them to generate more income to bring change to the lives of Wilson and his siblings.

For the village community as a whole, World Vision is striving to increase the literacy rate, while also focusing on shortfalls of safe drinking water, hygiene, social mobilisation and healthy food for children.

World Vision’s Birampur team hope they can transform the lives of Wilson and his community with the support of donors.