WUNRN
Bangladesh – Boat Schools Bring Learning to Children in Flood & Monsoon Areas - Girls
Students at a floating school enter their boat-based
classroom. Photo/Shidhulai Swanivar Sangstha
By Syful Islam – 9 March 2015
DHAKA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Anna
Akter, a nine-year-old student at a floating school in Bangladesh's remote
Natore district, says she might have missed out on her education during annual
monsoon floods without her boat-based classroom.
The same goes for Khushi Khatun, who also
studies at the boat school where she gets free tuition and materials.
"Had there been no such school, she would
have had to walk two kilometres along a muddy path or take a boat journey
during monsoon which may have discouraged her to study," said her father
Nazir Uddin, a farmer in Pangasia village.
Hundreds of students in the northern Bangladesh
district are taught in floating schools, an initiative to make education
available to children whose lives are complicated by regular flooding.
"Instead of the students going to school,
the school reaches them," said Mohammed Rezwan, founder of Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha,
the non-profit organisation that introduced the country's first floating school
system.
It also trains farmers to grow vegetables in
floating gardens and raise ducks and fish, as well as offering free farm
inputs.
The boat schools are the kind of measure that
can help education in developing nations like Bangladesh become more resilient
to extreme weather and worsening climate impacts.
Governments meeting in Japan from March 14-18
to adopt a new action plan to reduce
the risk of disasters are expected to call for better ways to
protect education before, during and after crises.
FROM BUS TO CLASS
Rezwan, an architect, was born and brought up
in Natore district. He was lucky as he didn't miss school in the rainy season
thanks to his family's boat, unlike many of his friends.
"From school age, I thought there must be
a solution to this problem," Rezwan told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by
telephone from his office in Natore.
While at university, it occurred to him that if
children couldn't make it to school, their classroom should go to them.
Rezwan established Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha
in 1998 with $500 from his savings and scholarship money, and the floating
school concept was launched in 2002.
The boats first serve as school bus, collecting
children from different riverside stops. Once they have docked, class begins.
Rezwan's organisation now has 22 wooden boats,
each able to accommodate 30 students. The boats have a classroom, a library and
internet-connected computers powered by onboard solar panels.
Each year, much of the Bangladesh countryside
is hit by flooding, forcing schools to close, Rezwan said. In 2007, for
example, some 1.5 million students were estimated to have been affected by
floods, he noted.
Around two thirds of the country's 160 million
people live in rural areas. During a normal rainy season, over a fifth of the
country's land is submerged, while in extreme years, up to two thirds can be
inundated.
As climate change impacts become visible,
disasters caused by extreme weather, including floods and storms, are
increasingly hitting the low-lying nation, Rezwan said. Sea-level rise could
exacerbate the situation in coastal areas in the coming years, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change has predicted.
IDEA SPREADS
The floating schools cover an area of 2 square
km, offering primary level education to local children who might otherwise have
stayed away from school.
Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha now also trains
adult villagers on children's and women's rights, nutrition, health and
hygiene, and how to farm ducks and fish alongside vegetables in "floating
gardens", helping them adapt to the impacts of climate change.
Some other flood-prone countries, including
Cambodia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Vietnam and Zambia, have introduced
floating schools, following Rezwan's model.
Nazma Khatun, a teacher at the Natore boat
school, said the nearest government primary school, located some 2 km away,
could not be reached by students from her area during seasonal flooding.
"The floating school has brought many
benefits," she said. "The students can easily go to school and stay
close to their parents. The literacy rate is growing here," she added.
Her daughter also attended the floating school
and is now studying at secondary level nearby. It has changed Khatun's life for
the better, too.
"After I got married, I stayed at home as a housewife," she said. "Now I am teaching in this school alongside pursuing my graduate studies."