Current News

UN Sustainable Development Goals - 07/08/2020

What we at ASCEND do to achieve the UN sustainability goals

In 2015, the United Nation has adopted an agenda with a total of seventeen global sustainable development goals, which Germany also wants to implement. Accordingly, the German government also wants to implement them in the actions of the government level, but also for civil society, the private sector and science. Because, as it says on its website, sustainable action affects us all.

With our three projects, we already cover some of these sustainability goals, such as the goal of health and well-being, sufficient good quality water supply or sustainable consumption. You want to read more about them? Look here or on our project pages, which now also show which goals are being pursued with which project.

Impressions CPI - 09/07/2020

A small look at our CPI

We have now been busy for several weeks distributing face masks, soaps and hygiene guidelines to the people in the slums of Khulna, Dacope, Bangladesh.

You want to continue supporting the project? To donate to the project as easily as possible via betterplace, just click here!

Here are a few impressions of this project phase:

Update CPI - 30/06/2020

WHO confirms the benefit of non-medical facemasks

At the beginning of the pandemic, it was not entirely clear whether non-medical facemasks provided the necessary protection against infections with Covid-19. Nevertheless, in April ASCEND decided to produce three-layer cotton masks for the population of Dacope, Khulna, Bangladesh, due to the urgent need for action.

At the beginning of this month, on June 5, WHO published a letter confirming the usefulness of non-medical masks with at least three layers of cotton to prevent infection, especially in areas where social distancing is not effective. This also applies to the slums in Bangladesh and underlines once more the necessity of our CP initiative.

More at https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/332293/WHO-2019-nCov-IPC_Masks-2020.4-eng.pdf

You still want to help us? Click here for more information on how!

Call for donations - 08/06/2020
As of today, our COVID-19 Prevention Intitiative is online at betterplace.org

With our first call for donations, we have already been able to collect 1,546 EUR and send it to Bangladesh. Many thanks for this! You are great! Without you we would never have managed it. Our masks and soaps are very well received by the people in Bangladesh, but they need many more so that really everyone can protect themselves.

Some countries are slowly returning to normality, but in Bangladesh the number of infected people is still rising: Confirmed infections: 65,769; doubling time: 15.3 days (status: 07.06.2020, source: Johns Hopkins University).

Therefore we decided to continue collecting donations and put our project online on betterplace.org. So you can now donate even easier - by credit card, Paypal, paydirekt. Donate, tell others, share it with your family and friends. Together we can protect even more people from being infected with Covid-19.

<a href="https://www.betterplace.org/en/projects/81764-covid-19-prevention-initiative-face-mask-and-soap-for-bangladesh" target="_blank">“COVID-19 Prevention Initiative: face mask and soap for Bangladesh”</a> – learn more and donate on betterplace.org.

Attention - 28/05/2020

Today the is international Menstrual Hygiene Day 2020!

Under the motto 'Periods in Pandemics', attention is drawn to the fact that the issue of inadequate menstrual hygiene will not become less relevant even in times of a global pandemic.

Women are still excluded from social life while menstruating.

Women are still considered dirty during their menstruation.

Women still use dirty rags because they are denied access to menstrual hygiene products.

Women still die from the consequences of poor menstrual hygiene.

Menstruation is not a problem. Poor menstrual hygiene is.

More information on https://menstrualhygieneday.org/

Update - 26/05/2020

What's new in Bangladesh?

Our COVID-19 Prevention Initiative has been running for almost one and a half months now. Here is a small overview of what we have been doing with your donations so far:

11,000 produced facemasks, half in Khulna city, the other half in Dacope
Information leaflets on the correct use of facemasks and other hygiene instructions
Production of soaps that enable the inhabitants of the slums to better implement the hygiene instructions

The distribution is already underway in the various districts. Here you have some insight in the project:

You want to help us? See here for our donation form!

Call for Donations- 22/04/2020

What you have made possible so far:

Our goal was 1000€ to support Bangladesh in the Corona crisis. Now we have already received 1,096€ in donations - that is enormous and amazes us immensely! Thank you very much for what you have made possible together with us.

Meanwhile the project has been worked out in detail and the production is already in progress (see photos). We will:

produce three layer cotton masks in our production facility in Dacope. .
distribute the masks free of charge, from house to house, to avoid large crowds at pick-up points. The people who distribute and manufacture the masks are of course specially protected to prevent them from spreading the virus.
not only give masks to people, but also information leaflets to teach them how to use facemasks, but also general rules of behaviour in a pandemic.
announce this further information also over loudspeakers and, thus, keep the necessary distance on the streets.

Help us, be part of it! Here you can find our donation form to continue supporting the project and to enable us to do even more. Together we can fight the pandemic. Or as the Italian says: Andra tutto bene. Everything will be fine.

Call for Donations - 05/04/2020

Exceptional situations require special measures!

The current corona pandemic affects not only us, but also and especially poor people in developing countries such as Bangladesh. We want to help - and we can help.

Residents of villages and slums in the Khulna and Dacope districts of Bangladesh have no means of protecting themselves against the spread of the virus. Social distancing, hygiene regulations and staying at home do not work in slums. And protective equipment such as face masks is hardly available.

Last year, we built a tailor workshop in Dacope - we now want to convert this infrastructure into a face mask production facility. The face masks will be distributed to poor people in Dacope and in the slums of Khulna.

Therefore we want to distribute them free of charge as an emergency measure - but this also means that we pay the material and labour costs. With only 17 EUR we can sew 100 face masks and distribute them for free to poor and destitute people.

Please transfer your donation directly to our donation account with the subject "face mask" or fill out the SEPA direct debit mandate!

Newsletter - 31/03/2020

Listen, there's a new newsletter!

You can now be kept up to date with a short update every quarter via mail. Whether you are a donor, supporter, member or otherwise interested - everyone can find a little info about what has been going on at ASCEND in the last three months. Interested? Click on the button above and register directly with our public team!

Today is World Water Day! - 22/03/2020

What does that mean?

This year's World Water Day is being held under the motto: Water and Global Warming. Why? Because rising sea levels mean that groundwater is becoming increasingly salty, making drinking water ever scarcer. That's why in Bangladesh water is collected and filtered during the rainy season to supply the population with drinking water all year round.

We are currently working on such a storage facility for a girls' school in the south of Bangladesh. You already want to help us with this? Click here for our donation form!

You want to know what exactly we are planning? We are currently working on that and will tell you in detail in the next weeks!

ASCEND is now on Instagram - 23/01/2020

Follow us here, too!

@ascend.ev

You would like to be kept visually up to date? Then follow us on Instagram! Here we will tell you about our past projects and upload photos of our new project within the next weeks!

Oops, a new project? Haven't heard of it and want to know more about it? Then have a look at the post below for more information.

Final Report Menstrual Hygiene Initiative - 06/01/2020

Everything at one glance

First of all: Happy New Year in the round! We hope you arrived well in the new year and had a wonderful time in the last weeks.

By the way, we did too, and on top of that we were still busy and finished the final report for the Menstrual Hygiene Initiative, which you can now download here! Here you can see what we have achieved in the last year in the project period from April to September and you can read what you have helped us to achieve.

By the way - a new project is already in the starting blocks, please read more about it in the post below.

Will you be part of it again?

earlier entries