The Charfassion Orphanage, located on an island bordering the Bay of Bengal in southern Bangladesh, provides shelter, food and means for an education in a communal family environment of one hundred boys and over a dozen dedicated staff members. Built in the early 1970s, the current facility, whose rectilinear design does not suit the climate nor the cultural traditions of the region, has been ravaged by the tropical-humid climate, destructive monsoons and floods. As one of the more rare "permanent" concrete structures on the island, the orphanage also serves as an emergency shelter during frequent natural catastrophes for the 2,000 impoverished villagers who live nearby in more "temporary" bamboo hut structures. The architectural design for a new facility embraces the unique Bengal lifestyle by providing living spaces that respond to the specific climate, geographic location, cultural traditions, religious values, psychological needs of children and indigenous building practices to redefine an institution that will benefit the orphans who live there and the greater community.
Undergraduate Matt Sueoka ’04 initiated the building design project as his Senior Honors Thesis in the Engineering Department at Dartmouth when he proposed an architectural project that would benefit a group or an organization. Dean Stuart Lord of the Tucker Foundation provided a list of contacts for groups in need of a new facility. The Charfassion Orphanage demonstrated the greatest need and willingness to cooperate from overseas. With vested interests in design, architecture and community service, Matt combined his science and engineering background with professional work experience to complete the design. Matt drew upon experience from two leave-term internships at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Architects in their San Francisco office, along with extensive volunteer work with the Tucker Foundation in repairing homes for poverty-stricken families in New Hampshire’s Upper Valley with the student-run program Operation Insulation.
Since its inception in April 2003, the orphanage project has evolved into a pilot endeavor for an international academic collaboration between Dartmouth and the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), one of the country’s leading universities, as future students from both schools will be able to work together on supplemental design projects for the new facility. This unique relationship will allow Dartmouth students to pursue individual and group projects to supplement the newly constructed orphanage facility, providing these students with invaluable international project exposure with a distinctive, non-western foreign culture. Dartmouth students will gain experience in overseas collaboration while broadening their understanding of a developing third world country. This opportunity will benefit them with a cultural education to test definitions of cultural standards and to better understand another way of life in an academic setting. Additionally, the infrastructure provided by a new facility will lay the foundation for future Dartmouth programs, similar to the Tucker Foundation’s Cross-Cultural Program in Nicaragua, that will allow undergraduate and graduate students to pursue short-term and long-term projects to benefit the orphanage and greater village communities. These projects range from engineering drinking water systems to providing medical care and nutritional education.
This proposal invites you to help promote leadership, community service and cultural understanding in a unique international academic collaboration. You can be a part of affording students the opportunity to turn theoretical academic exercises into practical applications that will benefit a community in dire need.
The plan is to finance construction of a student-designed orphanage facility that will provide the infrastructure for future international collaborative projects.
The primary goals of this project are to provide students with an opportunity to work with foreign students from a non-Western culture and to promote the growth of future Tucker programs that provide students with international exposure in an academic setting. By showing potential benefactors this unique and enterprising way in which the Tucker Foundation helps students and global communities, the orphanage project will aid in future fundraising.
The Charfassion Orphanage project will:
Dartmouth's Tucker Foundation will raise funds for construction of the new facility while some additional funds will be raised by the orphanage administration in Bangladesh to supplement the stated goal of $259,380. This overall goal will be divided by cost of building, allowing donors to select one or more buildings to fund.
