The Bangla Crew

When I was growing up in Birmingham in the UK, we used to watch this TV magazine programme, aimed especially for the South Asian community, called Eastern Eye. We used to record it on our video.

One of the recorded programmes had a dance and musical group called the bangla crew, hence the title of this post.

We actually learned all the dance moves as kids. Did you ever do stupid stuff like that?

Anyway, I am working with Abhinav who is in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka on a documentary he is making with young people about poverty.

It sounds really interesting – this is what Sudipta – who is also working on the recording – said to me via email ..

The documentary will be from the our point of view, that is from the point of view of teenagers.

Specifically, what we hope to show in our documentary will be the “gap” between the rich and poor in the city, the difference between the privileged schools and underprivileged schools, the difference in health care available, the roles that local and international organizations are playing to tackle the issue of poverty in Bangladesh and also their shortcomings.

We will be showing the personal stories of children from privileged and underprivileged schools along with the personal stories of people like rickshaw pullers who lead a terrible life.

Sudipta says that they will send me a sample video and some photos which I will post here when I get them. I need a sample recording to check whether the sound and video quality will be good enough for us to broadcast.

I think poverty is more damaging when you can see the rich and what they have. Maybe it’s worse to be poor in Britain than it is in Africa?

We did something like this before – take a look at what we did and here are the photos to go with those stories. Photos on poverty in the UK, and on poverty in Jamaica.

I’m interested in doing a documentary in the deprived neighbourhoods of Chicago at some point. I am working with these teenagers to get something off the ground, but it’s been a month since I asked them to do a recording for me and I haven’t heard anything from them, despite my emails and calls – which is abit worrying.