Exodus From Hunger Read Online Free PDF Page B

news in many languages. When she was interviewed on radio, farmers would call from remote parts of Uganda to let her know if her programs weren’t working well in their areas.
    The 2010 earthquake in Haiti again brought images of extreme suffering into our living rooms. Haiti faces exceptional challenges—a long history of exploitation by foreign powers, class conflicts, corruption, and now a massive reconstruction task. Yet the number of deaths due to routine poverty around the world is equivalent to a Haitian earthquake every week, and the ongoing poverty of Bangladesh or Tanzania seldom shows up on our television screens. All the good news that is coming from countries like Bangladesh and Tanzania almost never shows up on our television screens.
    JEROME SARKAR
     
When I think about hopeful trends in developing countries, I think of my friend Jerome Sarkar. My wife Janet and I spent most evenings with him when we were working in northwest Bangladesh many years ago. Jerome was my colleague on the staff of the Rangpur Dinajpur Rural Service, a grassroots development agency that Lutheran churches around the world support.
    Bangladesh had just been through its war of independence from Pakistan. The U.S. secretary of state at the time, Henry Kissinger, predicted that Bangladesh would always be an “international basket case.” But the proportion of Bangladesh’s population in poverty has dropped since its independence from 70 percent to 40 percent. Literacy has more than doubled, and child mortality is less than half of what it was. Bangladesh has maintained economic growth and democracy since the early 1990s. 12
    Jerome kindly sent me his thoughts on how his own life has intertwined with his nation’s progress against poverty.
    In 1945 my father fell seriously ill and died at the age of thirty-eight. Our mother with her five children was at a loss. Nothing could save us without intervention of Almighty God and we were praying to Him for His mercy. An American priest, Father Norkauer, appeared as God’s angel and arranged to put us in an orphanage.
    His sister later funded my education at Holy Cross High School. The priests who ran the school also helped poor people from time to time with food, medicines, and money. This made a big impression on me.
    I took a position in a pharmaceutical company and completed my bachelor’s degree attending a local college on the night shift. I then married my wife Maria and started family life.
    In the early seventies, Bangladesh was in political turmoil. At the beginning of the liberation war, we had to flee and take shelter in a village. Due to lack of law and order, common men like us were passing our days in helpless conditions. The company where I was working also suffered a setback in business. During the postwar turmoil, nepotism and corruption were the rule of the day. Because of abuses within my company, I decided to leave.
    Through a friend, I approached the director of Rangpur Dinajpur Rural Service (RDRS) and joined the organization in 1975. I helped to manage a grassroots construction program in northern Bangladesh. If villages would provide labor and local materials, RDRS would help them build a school or a culvert for a local road. Besides fulfilling my official responsibilities, I helped RDRS staff members form a cooperative credit union for their own self-advancement. I eventually moved to the RDRS office in Dhaka and then retired from full-time service in 1995.
    My wife Maria left this earthly abode for eternity in 1993. Maria and I were blessed with four children. My youngest son Hubert died while doing his master’s in structural engineering. My eldest son, a master’s in economics, is serving in a commercial bank as an executive. My second son, a master’s in statistics, is a professor in a leading college, and my daughter, a bachelor’s in arts and education, is a teacher in a school. My daughters-in-law are also master’s degree holders. In a country like