What do you do when you face practical challenges like how to afford enough food? And your solutions are severely limited because the society you were born into decided that you, as a human being, are much less valuable than the other human beings around you?
Do you give up? Do you accept it as your fate? Do you become angry and bitter and hoard whatever you can for yourself, excluding others the way they have excluded you? Or, do you look to your faith, find your voice, and encourage the people around you to do the same? Do you start advocating for change that will benefit your own community and also those around you who may have looked down on you before?
Pastor Sumon’s story
Pastor Sumon lives in a small village in Bangladesh. The region is not known for its current prosperity, though the fading palaces in the area speak of wealthier times. For Pastor Sumon’s family though, born into a caste tradition that ranks his bloodline amongst the lowliest – the ‘untouchables’ – his family is likely to have struggled for generations. Sumon’s community has been considered with unkind adjectives such as ‘dirty’ and neighbouring communities and passing travellers have tended to avoid the village where he lives as much as possible.
All of this has meant that in Pastor Sumon’s community, many children did not go to school – either because the family couldn’t afford it or because the children were not welcome in schools because of their social status. Literacy rates were very low and child marriage was extremely common as parents sought ways to provide for their families. Simple things like access to clean water, good sanitation and shelter were real issues for the people in Pastor Sumon’s village.
But then, he saw a way for things to change.
