Lyrian Fleming was born in suburban Sydney, Australia, in 1980. With her nose often stuck in books as a little girl, she imagined the world to be the kind of place she wanted to get lost in. All grown up now, she is doing her very best to play global hide-and-seek. After graduating from the University of Technology, Sydney with a double degree in Communications and International Studies, Lyrian has worked as a communications professional and writer in the not-for-profit, Government, and development sectors for the past ten years. In between she has found hiding places to call home in Saint Petersburg, Russia and Chittagong, Bangladesh while collecting favorite dishes from all over the world: coconut chutney in Kerala, fresh spring rolls in Vietnam, and khichuri in Bangladesh. After working for CARE Bangladesh on the SHOUHARDO food security program, Lyrian is especially interested in childhood education and women’s empowerment, and is looking forward to helping the Children’s Village grow from a grain of sand into an entire beach full of possibilities.

Since her early days, Traute Gericke has loved to travel foreign countries, meet different people, get to know other cultures and ways of living. She has been to a lot of countries, e.g. Australia, North, Middle and South America, South Africa, India, Vietnam, and lived and worked in Great Britain, Italy and Brazil. Today she is still curious, active and interested in various subjects. Being able to spend more time in activities and hobbies of her choice she gets more and more involved in international social projects. She shares life with her husband, two cats and three dogs.

Paula Golding-Ahap was born in Australia in a small country town. She is a visionary, a dreamer, and an idealist, and secretly believes in utopia. Paula has completed an Associate Diploma in Marketing, a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Asian Studies (Bahasa Indonesian) and Development Studies, a Certificate in Environmental Change Management, a Post Graduate Certificate in TESOL (teaching English as a second language), and a Post Graduate Certificate in International Development. Currently, she is embarking on a Masters in Peace and Conflict Studies. Aside from this, Paula has facilitated numerous professional and self development workshops, mentored Australian primary school students, undertaken environmental energy audits for the corporate sector, and during her one year volunteering role, in Bangladesh, coached Bangladeshi teacher trainers, trainees and faculty members. Paula is a peace lover, a parent, and is a strong advocate for equal opportunities for all, a healthy, sustainable environment, and loves to empower and inspire others to reach their full potential. She has immersed herself in many world cultures and has lived, worked and travelled extensively. Paula believes that the globe’s future lies in the hands of our children, and that it is imperative that they be armed with the skills and knowledge needed to make long term shifts on the planet. She possesses a colourful insight into life and is honoured to be involved with the expansion of the Children’s Village Haluaghat.

Tahsin Mahmud was born in 1990, and since then has traveled and dwelled in more than eleven countries. He spent his childhood years in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe and completed his primary school in Virginia, USA. He then spent around four years in New Delhi, India for his Middle School and completed his High School in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He has recently finished his A levels from Dhaka and is planning to study Electrical Engineering. Tahsin has been a social activist for the past four years and has worked hard towards creating a better future for one of the poorest nations in the world, Bangladesh. He has recently helped victims of the cyclone Sidr in Barisal, Bangladesh and has been involved in local community services. Living near the slum dwellers and the poorest community in the capital, he has encountered the daily lives of the impoverished. He is also a private tutor for physics, chemistry and maths. He enjoys playing football, cricket, cycling and swimming.

Casey McCarthy was born in small town in Australia in 1981. She spent her childhood chasing butterflies, swimming and directing performances with her sister and cousins. Following graduation from the University of Queensland in 2002 with Bachelor degrees in Journalism and English, Casey moved to London where she spent the following 4 years working to support her love of travel. On returning to Australia in 2007, Casey began working in the child protection sector in communication and media roles. When the opportunity to spend a year in Bangladesh, working with UNICEF came up, Casey jumped at the chance. She quickly fell in love with the country, its people and a career in aid work. Now, back in Australia, desperately planning her next development contract, Casey is excited to be involved with the Children’s Village – offering whatever writing, editing and communications advice she can to ensure the project receives the support it deserves.

Stefan Naß was born and raised in the beautiful city of Hamburg, Germany. His parents, sharing a love for travel, enabled him to see many diverse countries in his youth and thus passed on this love to him. After completing his high school education in 2009 he gave way to this passion and spent two months traveling Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. Being interested in humanitarian issues, he fulfilled a lifelong dream of his after that by spending a five-month voluntary service in Ghana, where he worked four months at two local hospitals and one month at the community based NGO Glorious Vision Orphans, which he continues to work for since his return to Germany. In the future Stefan hopes to study medicine and work as a “Doctor without Borders,” while he dedicates most of his free time to his friends, love of music and art.

Mihai A. Petrovici was born in Bucharest in 1983. The bloody revolution around Christmas 1989 passed by almost without him noticing, as did the turbulent post-revolutionary pseudo-democratic regime (still led by the former “elites”) – only later did he realize how lucky he was for having been under his parents’ constant protection. He went to an English kindergarden, but the German school he attended later was pivotal for his decision to go to Germany after graduating from high school (2001). With an experimental physicist as a father and a theoretical physicist as a mother, he was left with little choice but to graduate in physics, which he did at the University of Heidelberg. He is now working as a Ph.D. student, somewhere on the border between theoretical and experimental neuroscience. As probably any physicist, he is fascinated by the “big three” we have yet to understand: the very small (elementary particles and fields), the very large (the cosmos) and the very complex (the brain). The thing he hates most is intellectual laziness, manifested in its purest form in religious fundamentalism; however, he is convinced that there is a cure for stupidity, and it’s called education. This is the main reason for which he is very excited about having the chance to work on a project as important and pioneering as the Children’s Village. In the little spare time he has left from work, he enjoys reading “hard” science-fiction and modern philosophy. In the even less spare time he has left from that, he tries to follow up on the many sports he had to give up after leaving his home country, including volleyball, basketball and muay thai.

A. H. M. Mustafizur Rahman was born in Dhaka in 1991. At a very young age he went to India and completed his elementary school at The Pinnacle School, New Delhi. He later moved back to Bangladesh and completed his A levels at the European Standard School. In 2010 he joined BRAC University in Dhaka to study economics. Mustafizur’s interests include music of all genres and sports like badminton and cricket. He also has a passion for reading books. His favorite authors are Jonathan Stroud, Christopher Paolini and Roald Dahl. He has always been very enthusiastic about helping others and hopes to gain further experience by doing social work as a volunteer for the Children’s Village Haluaghat.

Saifur Rahman was born in 1983 in Chittagong, the port city of Bangladesh. He completed his school and college level education in Chittagong and shifted to Dhaka University to complete his graduation in English Language and Literature in 2001. In his spare time he enjoys reading, watching films, taking day trips and going out with friends an family. After finishing university, Saifur stayed on in Dhaka and has volunteered with different NGOs in Bangladesh and worked with slum dwellers, the Dalit community and street children. While working for Global Xchange he gathered some insight into the practical side of working in local communities in Bangladesh and in the far north of Scotland, which he hopes to apply in development initiatives in future.