Today I met this great guy, a fellow Bangladeshi by the name of Rashid Ali. He is a keen marathon runner and a bicyclist. He has raised money for various charities such as the children of Gaza and the Syrian crisis among others. He has ridden his bicycle throughout Europe to raise funds for these causes.
He is about to embark on his most challenging bicycle ride to date. Tomorrow, Saturday 30th June 2017 at 09:30 am British Summer Time he and a colleague will leave London's Olympic Park in Stratford and ride towards Paris. From Paris, they will continue on towards Istanbul in Turkey. From there he and his riding partner will ride to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, their final destination.
Their journey is 5,700km long and they intend to complete it in time to perform The Hajj Pilgrimage.
Their target is to raise money (£50,000, $63,000) for street children in Dhaka, Bangladesh and Pakistan as well as Syrian children affected by the six years of war.
Rashid Ali a program officer with Muslim Charity a London-based non-profit organisation recently visited Bangladesh where according to the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) there were 1.5 million street children in 2015. This number is projected to hit 1.56 million by 2024. In Dhaka, most of the street kids can be found at Kamlapur Railway Station, the city's central station and Sadharghat, Dhaka's river port.
He spoke to children who collect cans and bottles to sell to recyclers for money. Rashid spoke to a boy called Ramzan who is ten-years-old and earned Taka 100 (£1, $0.77) per day to feed himself and his two siblings.
Whilst speaking to Ramzan, Rashid saw that the boy was fidgeting. He asked why that was so. The boy replied that talking to Rashid was costing him time and money. He further explained that as the ferries and boats arrived at Sadharghat Port he was missing the opportunity to collect plastic bottles to sell.
Even though Ramzan and other children cannot feed themselves they kept dogs as pets, for fear of being robbed of their bottles and worse being abused and tortured by adults. The dogs protected them and their meagre possessions from unscrupulous predatory human traffickers, and pimps.
Rashid gave the boy Taka 200 (£2, $1..44) and asked him if he could continue interviewing him. He then asked Ramzan, what does he dream about. The boy replied, "I would like to experience the feeling of having a belly full of food, I've heard about it but never experienced it".
After the interview, Rashid took the boy and his siblings to a nearby cafe and fed them till they were content.
Rashid explained that after his bicycle ride he is planning to return to Dhaka, Bangladesh to open an orphanage and save as many of these children as he and his organisation can.
This is only one story of one boy there are millions like this not only in Bangladesh but throughout the world in countries where poverty is rife and others where war and violence have affected children the most.
You can follow Rashid Ali's ride on London2Makkah and donate if you wish. We may not be able to help every child that is suffering on this planet, but we can all do our little bit any which way we can.