Gratian Mihailescu

After four years of hard work on the part of Abu Sayed and the local population of Satkhira, and with the help of friends and contributors (Master CoDe and others), the Masud Parves Library was inaugurated on 15 February this year. My friend Abu Sayed is talking in the last newsletter of CoDe about what this experience has meant to  him and what he hopes and plans has for the future. While I was reading the article from the newsletter, I felt goose bumps and shivers of excitement and emotion cross my body:

“The most important lesson I have learnt throughout these last years in implementing the Masud Parves Library is that there are always people around us with the same energetic mind and a strong willingness to work for social welfare. If likeminded people with a positive mentality purposively work together, success becomes meaningful and achievable.

When people with similar passions and beliefs around the world connect and work together, distance doesn’t matter — no landmark seems unachievable. We just need to find those people. With less effort than we suppose, we can find them by using our social capital that most of the time we fail to identify or notice.

This was a realization that spawned within me while I was asking Mihai, one of my friends from Europe, regarding his involvement in Masud Parves Library. Gratian, another friend of mine from Romania and also from my Master CoDe edition, literally opened my eyes to a whole new understanding of the bountiful relational resources around us and their connecting and productive power in doing social good. He thinks that boundaries and identities disappear when people have the same immense desire to foster social welfare. He enlightened me by stressing, “you live in a different continent and Mihai lives in another continent, but the work you are doing and what Mihai thinks are the same. Although you don’t know each other you both have a common vision. This means we have the same energetic mentality to work together. That’s why we all are together to establish the Masud Parves Library”. This identification or construction of a common imaginary is so powerful that it can bring people from across boundaries together for the services of distant and destitute humanity.

We started discussing, with our friends, and disseminating our ideas regarding the construction of the library in 2011. These were friends who were diverse in nationality but similar in mindset. As it turned out, we found a group of energetic people around us who had a hidden desire to do something for those parts of society that need the most help — the destitute and the deprived. We thought together and shared our tentative ideas around giving our altruistic motives and intended efforts an organizational shape. What came out were thoughtful proposals on how to form the executive committee, what should be the operational roles and positions and what should we aim at for the future. All of them liked the ideas generated and participated with us in helping to make the dream real. With mental and financial support of these friends, we managed to open the library for public use on 15 February, 2016.

Today, we have 322 items of reading materials (text books, research related books, agricultural and religious books, literature, documents and leaflets on awareness building, children’s books, nature/science/arts related books, magazines, planning and development related books, etc.), around 10,000 e-books and 5 laptops at the library for the students and villagers. We recruited 2 assistants to take care of the running of the library and to achieve the goals that the library has set for itself. This is the result of a combined effort of 24 nationalities. But all that has been achieved by these friends will not stop here. We are continually working towards making the library’s scope and spread even wider.”

Gratian Mihailescu

 

The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of the author, and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of ALDA and the European Union.