LSF Grantee Promotes Building Assets and Education Opportunities for Girls in Remote, Rural Bangladesh
In rural Bangladesh, young girls interested in educating themselves face a number of cultural, logistical and financial obstacles to realizing their goal. One Levi Strauss Foundation (LSF) grantee has figured a way around those obstacles by bringing school to the girls – on a boat.
In a remote part of Bangladesh, some two million people live in 16,000 villages, accessible only by water via an extensive network of rivers. Families are poor and the river villages lack basic necessities such as health care, electricity, roads and schools. It is an especially hard life for young girls who must work to help support their families. Local cultural traditions and values combined with crime and extreme poverty prevent girls from going to school and getting even a basic education. And without an education, it would be nearly impossible for these girls to move out of the poverty they grow up in.
Recognizing that education is a critical asset that helps people achieve economic security and lead independent lives, LSF, in 2004 began supporting Shidulai Swanirvar Sangstha (SSS) to help girls and women in one of the poorest areas in Bangladesh become educated. LSF provided SSS a grant of $100,000 over two years for this work.
Through its Mobile Boat Education Program, SSS brings a school to these isolated villages. A fleet of 15 boats collects students from different riverside villages, anchoring at the last village courtyard. The classes cover basic literacy, math, environmental studies and life skills. Educational materials and textbooks are provided for free.
Sakeya Katun, a seven year old girl from the village of Bahadurpur, lives with her mother and blind grandmother. The family’s only means of survival is begging in the streets. “Before, we could not accommodate Sakeya’s education,” Sakeya’s mother said. “But now we have this Mobile Boat Education program which does not have any additional fees and cost, and it comes to pick Sakeya up and drops her off after classes.”
SSS also runs a Digital Boat School program, targeting youth and adults in these villages during evening sessions. The Digital Boat Schools are outfitted with large projector screens and multimedia equipment. They moor at river sides to screen free educational programs to audiences of up to 300 people. Topics have included water conservation techniques and skills that help women start their own micro-enterprises.
To combat the cultural and religious taboos that prevent girls from gaining primary education, SSS organizes Girl Child Rights Associations to advocate the equal treatment of both genders in education, health, work, and society. These groups also monitor and document incidences of child trafficking and report cases to local authorities and NGOs for action. According to SSS, 7,000-10,000 girls from the remote areas the Mobile Boat Education serves are trafficked annually to other countries, usually forced to engage in domestic or sex work. Since the introduction of SSS programs, it is estimated that the rate of domestic marital abuse has decreased by 15%, and the rate of child trafficking and prostitution by 10%.
Support from LSF has enabled the introduction of a series of complementary initiatives to the Mobile Boat Education and Digital Boat School programs. In 2005, SSS began providing parents of students enrolled in its schools with micro-loans to seed small-scale business activities. SSS also uses the boats to bring doctors and healthcare professionals in to provide regular check-ups for children and their families and educate villagers on health and hygiene, nutrition, pregnancy and HIV/AIDS prevention.
“SSS provides a holistic model for young women to gain access to a quality education and improved health standards, and develop essential life skills,” said Daniel Lee, LSF Program Manager. “At the same time, economic development programs for their parents help them draw a sustainable income, set aside a portion of their savings for education, and ultimately, keep their children in school.”
“In many ways, SSS is a model LSF grantee,” Daniel said. ”Their education curriculum promotes womens’ rights as citizens and as workers, HIV prevention and financial literacy. SSS is providing these girls the tools to break the cycle of poverty that persists from generation to generation in Bangladesh, an important product sourcing country for LS&CO.”
To learn more about SSS, visit their web site at: http://www.interconnection.org/sss/