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Floating School ...
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Making Basic
Education Easily Accessible To Children of Chars
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The riverine sand and silt
landmasses are known as char in Bangladesh. These
chars are home to over 7 million people of the
country. These areas are extremely hazard prone as
well as remote and have almost no basic amenities –
food production, education, water and sanitation,
health care system, etc., for decent living. These
adverse situations make the life in the chars
extremely deplorable |
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and marginal. The char dwellers
struggle everyday for health care, food and
education for their children. Solutions to these
problems require approaches that would help
impoverished households access to appropriate and
sustainable service delivery mechanism for meeting
their basic needs and cope better with the difficult
environment. Education is one such service which is
almost non-existent for children in the chars.
Majority of the children in the chars are engaged in
various hazardous activities – fishing, boating, and
other employment where |
they work on an average
48 hours per week and earns very low amount of
money. It is well understood that banning child
labor would not solve the problem since unemployment
precipitates the poverty of children and rather
increases juvenile crime and social problems.
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ChangeMaker plans a sustainable
and char contextual program that would provide
support to the fragile livelihoods in the chars and
would improve the well-being of the entire household
by promoting education and skills development
programs for the families of the children. The
program would serve a |
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large number of households of
remote chars where currently such services are not
adequately accessible. Targeting isolated
river-basin communities, ChangeMaker is planning to
operate a “Floating Knowledge Center” that would
navigate the river network delivering education,
information and capacity building training to
children and their families who are forced to live
on these flood-prone lands. Facilities of the
“Floating Knowledge Center” would include schooling
for children, a knowledge center
or the farmers and
the |
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fishers and a skills training
center for the women. The Floating Knowledge Center
would have facilities such as computers, mobile
phones, multimedia projectors, etc., to provide
various market, product and public service
information such as natural calamities, health and
hygiene, water and sanitation, nutrition, etc to the
char dwellers. The schooling facility of the
“Floating Knowledge Center” is critically important
since a large number of children of the char
community have little freedom to access mainland
where the major schools are situated. With the
floating school they will be able to have education
and knowledge as well as women would have access to
develop valuable skills to improve their livelihood.
Education opportunities to these char children and
adolescents is expected to experience improved
livelihood conditions through enhanced knowledge
employment opportunities which would enable them and
their future generations to come out of the vicious
circle of poverty. The initial direct result would
be that working children will have access to basic
education and would contribute to the national goal
of “Education for All”, as well as to development of
productive human resource.
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Recognizing the demands of the
reality of char children and adolescents, the
floating schools would enable the education
facilities at their door-step allowing attractive,
non-conventional education structure and
flexible school timing which s
expected to overcome the poor image
of conventional |
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schools and teachings practiced
in school. The school would provide basic education,
awareness on coping strategies, health care
facilities, as well as counseling. The school would
also cater to development of different co-curricular
potentials of children through art, drama, music,
sports and educational tours and excursions. These
social, physical and spiritual developments are
expected to shape children into responsible citizens
for the future. Through the floating facility
ChangeMaker believes that children and adolescents
would be able to develop not only as productive and
responsible citizens but also regain their self
confidence and self esteem. After completion of the
basic education the children will be able to peruse
formal and higher education in mainstream schools.
It is expected that the project will raise the socio
economic condition of the poor char children and
adolescents to a level so that they can efficiently
participate in national development with enhanced
capacity, dignity and fulfillment of their basic
rights. The project is expected to increase access
to general education. |
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ChangeMaker plans to integrate
the government, private sector enterprises, and
other civil society organizations in the process to
make the project sustainable through their
contribution and commitment.
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Why did we
think of Floating School?
A floating school system could be an effective
strategy for attracting the socially and
economically challenged char children who have
little access to schools and good learning
environment. In the past many different approaches
have been taken by government and NGOs to make
education available to these char children. All of
these programs involved fixed schools which are
inadequate in number and majority would become
vulnerable during flooding and other natural
calamities. Unfortunately these approaches failed to
sustain in the long run. The key reason for these
programs going ineffective was |
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because the char children were
unable to access them as well as full time task load
during the flooding seasons and the main stream
curriculum was little applicable in the char areas
for these children and their families. Moreover, the
entire setup was not appealing to the children. To
the children living in the char areas the importance
of education itself held a very low awareness and
interest, and the schools failed to attract them to
make the extra effort to enroll and continue the
formal education. Another drawback that was observed
on this issue is that |
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the parents and employers were
not involved with the school activities, which made
it hard for them to get to the core of the impacts
these schools can make in life.
To address these issues ChangeMaker came up with the
concept of floating school where the school will
reach out for its target char pupil and make
education available at their convenience as well as
making it exciting for them.
Floating schools can also be considered as an
adaptation measure for the impacts of Global
Warming, due to which Bangladesh is predicted to
face increased inundation in the coming years in
almost 38% of our land areas. In the inundated
areas, where the mainstream schools remain
inaccessible or non- functional for a long time span
of the year, Floating Schools can be the perfect
substitute for the mainstream schools in those
locations. The Floating Schools can serve as an
effective strategy in National Adaptation Programme
of Actions (NAPA). |
What do we want to do?
To provide non-formal education classes for “out of school”
and working children (7 to 18 years of age) residing in the
char areas. Also provide them with knowledge on social,
economical and environmental issues relating to chars
through infotainment – a system where critical and urgent or
life-oriented information are provided through entertainment
media. Since the target group for this project involves the
underprivileged, working or very poor children, who neither
can afford to have mainstream education or healthy
entertainment, our goal would be to give them education in
an entertaining way to make it more appealing to them. The
floating school will also incorporate health services, such
as basic check up, first aid, vaccination, immunization and
de-worming to address the needs of the underprivileged
children. Therefore the floating school would do the
following:
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Provide education and literacy at the door-step of the
underprivileged children Promote awareness of social issues
associated with illiteracy and poverty |
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Provide health care services and build awareness of
health safety |
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Provide different co-curricular potentials of children
through art, drama, music, sports and educational tours and
excursions. |
How will the System
Operate?
The floating school would enable to reach out to children on the
remotest chars where education service provisions are
non-existent. Char dwellers are greatly affected by frequent
flooding, evacuation and erosion of chars and who can hardly can
continue their education would be the main beneficiary of the
project.
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The floating school will be made by
converting a flat barge turned into a classroom. Facilities
of textbook and other materials will be arranged inside the
boat, like the existing mobile-library. Special features,
such as, logo, jingle, illumination, etc., will be assigned
to the boat to make it easily recognizable to the target
group as well as to the families and employers of the
children.
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The boat will provide a classroom for the children. |
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The boat will be equipped to provide
with books and multimedia as education materials |
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A general physician will be present
on site to provide children with first aid and safety
tips and specific health issues will be addressed once a
month by specialized doctors/ physicians at each
location |
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An educational trip, parents meeting
or celebrity guest meeting will be arranged once a
month. These sessions will be open to children and their
parents/ employers so that they can visualize the
benefit of the floating school. |
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Awareness program for parents and
employers to encourage them to send their children to
floating school |
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Cultural events can also be arranged on special
occasions |
Each day the boat will make trips, one in the
morning and another in the afternoon. Every alternate day the
boat will go to the same location. There will be one weekend
review session for those who are unable to attend school on
weekdays. Approximately 30 to 50 children will be enrolled in
one class. Every 6 months the locations will be changed to bring
larger area under project coverage. Eventually the project can
be replicated in major char areas in other parts of the country.
The floating school would also target the parents or employers
where agricultural and business ideas, social issues, hands on
skills like stitching, knitting, painting etc. will be
conferred.
What to Expect out of the Project?
Right to knowledge and skills is one of the major points of
child right according to the survival and development rights
under the convention on the rights of children (CRC). Every
child has right to acquire knowledge and skills that is required
for their betterment in life. Unfortunately a large number of
children in Bangladesh barely live their lives under the poverty
line and are deprived of the very basic needs. Survival itself
becomes so hard on them that the words of ethics, knowledge and
morals become an alien concept to them. ChangeMaker intends to
bring light to these lives though undertaking the project
“School on Boats”. The changes we expect through this project
are:
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Development of knowledge and skills for a better life |
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Increasing health safety through proper dissemination of
knowledge |
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Developing self esteem and self dependence through
practical education |
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Awareness against crime, drugs, HIV and more |
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Better employment opportunities through education |
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Prevention of child labor in hazardous jobs, improvement
of workplace and better health management through awareness |
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Increase of corporate social responsibility trough
adequate linkage |
The project also plans to engage the large
private sector enterprises to sponsor the programs through
corporate social responsibility.
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