The Char Fasson Orphanage is located in a rural area in southern Bangladesh. The climatic difficulties along Bangladesh’s southern coastline make its nine coastal districts the poorest and least developed of the entire country, a country where the personal income is less even than that of neighboring India.

Bangladesh’s destructive weather was actually the causative factor in the founding of the orphanage. It was built in 1972 in response to a devastating cyclone and tidal surge that killed hundreds of thousands of people in November 1970[TAH1] . A local landowner donated the land and UNICEF contributed the construction funds that resulted in the orphanage.

A former Australian MP, the honorable Mr. Len Reid, accepted the directorship of the orphanage after a visit to the devastated area. His organization ran the orphanage until 1992 when Mr. Reid’s advanced age made it impossible to continue managing the daily operations. Unfortunately, there was no one else in the organization available to take over from him so he handed the reins over to A.H.M. Maninuddin Ahmed (Jahangir), son of the original landowner. Jahangir was able to obtain some funding from a Dutch children’s rights organization, which lasted until 2006 when the commitment ended. Since then the orphanage has barely managed to scrape by on an annual grant of $5,000 from the Bangladesh government. Though appreciated, the Bangladeshi government’s annual grant is horribly deficient when faced with the $25,000 needed annually to meet minimal daily expenses including: food; clothing; soap; school fees; books; blankets; mosquito netting; medical care and medicine; modest staff salaries (the highest paid staffer earns just $64 per month); and more.