Hey Friends
My name is Reshma Bangar – The summary here is that I am small town, Mississippi girl. I grew up riding four wheelers, playing sports, and hanging out with my friends in the small town of Laurel, Mississippi. My life on the outside seemed pretty typical, until I tell you where I started.
I am the baby of 5 siblings. Two beautiful sisters and two handsome brothers. We have the best mother a child could ask for. My mother, however, plays a big role in why my heart has ached for the region of Southeast Asia. Lyna is her name, but she is widely known as “Nanny”. When Lyna was 16, she was shipped off on a boat with a man whom with become the father to her 5 children.. yes to be a Child Bride. Her marriage to my father ended in abuse: sexually, mentally, physically, and emotionally. In the states, we all gasp at this “lifetime movie”, but in Southeast Asia, it’s a common practice. Most women and children in the middle east are treated like animals, or worse. Human trafficking continues to rise, child abductions are at an all time high, and poverty gets worse by the second.
Surely, with all this behind the scenes information, I would rise up and do something about it, right? Wrong. I went through life as normally as I could. I turned my eyes and ears to positive, and wouldn’t even read the news that came across about the horrific tragedies happening in my own culture.
This all changed when I went back to Southeast Asia for the first time in 2016. I chose to go to Bangladesh, mainly out of fear of my father knowing I was in his homeland. Little did I know, this trip would change my life. It would cause me to go back for an extended amount of time, have crazy dreams of building a home for the very girls I resembled as a child (with no money to do it), and now be in the FINAL stages of opening up a girls home for girls being rescued from the sex trade.
So this is me: A small town, southern girl – going back to give girls the hope and purpose that I’ve found in spite of a terrible childhood – into the brightest future.