Educare for 150 underprivileged children

Since 2018, Uttaran's project "Educare for 150 underprivileged children" has been receiving support from people worldwide with the help of GlobalGiving. The project helped us support underprivileged students from two separate schools, Shishutirtho and Samakal. This project focused on students from landless, Dalit, and low-income families. The project aimed to keep the students from being victims of discrimination improve educational quality and the environment. Simultaneously, the project also helped decrease dropout rates and child marriage by supporting their education. Also, it developed a sense of responsibility among the community to come forward together to ensure education for all and stand up against the presence of child marriage, discrimination, and high dropout rate. 

GlobalGiving has created an opportunity for Uttaran to create a platform to gather funds from worldwide. Uttaran proposed a total of $10,000 for educational materials distribution, of which $4,556 has been raised so far. Uttaran has fallen behind in giving monthly stipends to students because it only raised 45% of its goal through GlobalGiving. The ability to provide such educational equipment has dramatically improved the quality of the student experience, with excellent consequences. Similarly, the distribution program was carried out at large gatherings to raise community awareness of a need to end discrimination and accept responsibility for the students' support.

In the meantime, Covid 19 pandemic became a threat in Bangladesh in March 2020 as the first wave of Covid 19 killed thousands of people across the country. The entire country was put under lockdown, and preventing the virus from spreading within the human body proved challenging. The Covid-19 epidemic has slowed economic growth and reversed the country's steady trend of poverty reduction. The pace of poverty alleviation has slowed, exports have declined, inequality at various levels has increased, and the poverty rate has risen. In this situation, from March 17, 2020, Bangladesh halted all of its educational institutions to protect students from abrupt public gatherings and rapid transmission. On the other hand, prolonged breaks in education represent a threat to students. As a result, Bangladesh's Ministry of Education announced the beginning of offline classes on September 12, 2021, confirming the Covid protocols. Keeping these aspects in mind, underprivileged students were provided with educational materials, nutritious food, and Covid preventive hygiene support (mask, hand sanitizer, handwash, soap) at Shishutirtho and Samakal schools with the help of GlobalGiving, community crowdfunding, and Uttaran's self-sourced of funding initiative. This proved to inspire the students to continue their education in a hope that things will get normal as soon as possible. This encouraged students to continue their education in the hopes that things will return to normal as soon as possible. As a result, we hope that our efforts will bring a smile to the faces of all children, rather than allowing the grim realities of the world to detract from their happiness. By this project Uttaran has also attempted to broaden horizons by instilling in affluent students the belief that it is their responsibility to embrace everyone in their class, regardless of caste, religion, or socioeconomic status, to eradicate discrimination at its origin. It can also send a message to privileged students, and that also empowers underprivileged students by assuring them that it is not their fault for coming from a poor family or being labeled as Dalit or untouchables. Rather, it is society's fault for having a narrow perspective on people who are Dalit, landless, single mothers, and the community's extremely poor. 

At present, Bangladesh is also infected by the new variant of Covid-19 (Omicron). The economic damage done by the previous waves of Covid particularly as the country was forced to go into lockdown was massive. Our economy is yet to recover in any shape, which means the Omicron variant poses a clear and present danger to our economy and our citizens' health. Considering the pitfalls of Covid, Uttaran is mobilizing the aid of local community crowdfunding and self-financing to keep the project viable. We expect that the initiative will be able to continue for the next six months with the funds currently deposited by community partitions. 

Being a non-profit organization at the grassroots level Uttaran expresses gratitude to GlobalGiving for helping us with the global platform. Currently, we want to focus our resources on local funding options to support underprivileged students. The "Educare" Project has been running for the past 45 months through GlobalGiving and as we are focusing on local financing, we would like to end this project cycle. We hope to seek assistance from GlobalGiving in the future and work with new challenges. Uttaran expressed gratitude to GlobalGiving for providing a platform that has enabled us to connect with people all around the world who are willing to donate to this worthy cause.