Join the Journey Towards Life Without Poverty

The following is a postcard from Neeharika Tummala, GlobalGiving's In-the-Field Representative in Bangladesh, about her recent visit to Spreeha Foundation.

I have visited several schools are India and Bangladesh, but Spreeha kids seem particularly jazzed about school as they interact with their teachers and schools. I got to learn about a neat early childhood development model which uses cards that combine images and text so that kids grasp concept immediately. You can see the enthusiasm in the photos as they guess which card corresponds to the alphabet.

The schools are in small rooms in densely populated slums, but seem to be the center of attraction as other kids peep in to see what is going on, or mothers walk around interacting with the Spreeha staff. As we walked around, I even found a Spreeha kid who was more than happy to show off his textbook as we walked around other homes.

It’s not just the kids that love school but also Spreeha’s older kids who learn advanced computer skills such as animation and digital design. Spreeha is probably one of the most technologically sophisticated NGO’s in general as they use open source learning software as part of their curriculum, they have a host of techie course such as animation where kids actually create content and they have remote audio-video machine for ENT diagnosis where doctors can interact with rural patients sitting in Spreeha’s office. It can’t get better than this for an engineer like me! These kids are going to be well set to take on the current market as they develop useful skills as well as confidence.