Educare for 150 underprivileged children

It has been over a year since the Pandemic has changed the world. Where many of the richer nations are recovering through the introduction of vaccines poorer nations like Bangladesh are going through a huge second wave of Coronavirus infection. Things are changing very rapidly as our neighboring country India has over 0.4 million cases everyday and around 4000 deaths everyday. In this situation as the country is going through a strict lockdown NGO front link worker’s movement has become very limited.

Last year all of the students we have supported were all given auto-pass by Government of Bangladesh. Like last year Shishutirtho school is facilitating parents on how to guide their children, provide monthly home assignments and then also guiding students over phone. This is merely an informal procedure to measure how well the students are learning in these unprecedented times with a new approach to teaching. Unfortunately in an assessment conducted by Uttaran and Shishutirtho around 32% children is not continuing their education at the moment. The survey also reports that once the school will be opened a majority of the students will return but yet some dropouts is projected.

While Shishutirtho school is struggling to accommodate all the its student with limited resources, Samakal Secondary School is trying to cope up with online class system. But this facilities are only received by students from class 6 – 10. At the same time teachers are providing multiple home assignments to the students. For one particular subject they might have up to three assignments. This assessment phase will be conducted for a span of six weeks and students will get their previous checked copies before a new assignment is given. This will help them to learn from their mistakes and not repeat them in the next exams. The Government has mentioned in the guidelines that the parents would come to the school to submit and later take back these assignments. The assignment topics are also set by the government and questions are creative enough for this type of open book exams. The students have so far shown their unique critical thinking through these assignments and we are quite happy with their progress so far. But currently due to the national lockdown the home assignments are temporarily suspended.

While the student of the secondary section are somehow managing to cope up with the situation the children’s at the primary section are relying on Government aired TV program to do the class. This again puts a barrier as many students does not have access to TV, Smart phone or internet.

Keeping these aspects in mind, with the support received from GlobalGiving and Uttaran’s own crowd funding initiative underprivileged students were provided with educational materials and winter clothes. This was done ensuring all covid precautionary protocols. This was proved to inspire the students to continue their education in a hope that things will get normal as soon as possible. We believe all children are precious. No children should feel out of place or upset just because their friends have new uniforms or notebooks whereas they do not. Therefore, we hope with our effort we will put a smile on all the children’s faces and not let the harsh reality of the world to undermine their happiness. 

Uttaran is also currently expanding both of these school’s infrastructure with the support of the Government of Bangladesh and its own fund. We hope that things will improve within this year and Uttaran pledges to make sure all the students will return to their school. In this regard Uttaran is currently planning a booster project to ensure zero dropout. This will be highlighted in Uttaran’s next report.

Case Study

It has been over a year since I went to my school. Three months back I visited my school with my Mom, it looked very empty, but I was happy to meet my teachers over there. They were very happy to see me. They gave me a new set of book as I was automatically promoted to class 4. I was kind of happy to know that I was automatically promoted without any exam but then again I miss the fun times we had during annual exams. I also received a sweater and a blanket. The winter this year was very cold.

We continue doing school over phone and home assignments but I don’t like this. None of my friends does. It is kind of suffocating without my school, my teaches and my friends. My grandfather received corona vaccine and he told me that soon we will be able to go back to school, I am eagerly waiting to get back.