Bangladesh Student Returns to Teach

By David Snyder

The road to the Sangoil School begins as tarmac, turns to gravel, and ends ultimately as a dirt-packed track. The path is unremarkable for rural Bangladesh, but for one son of Sangoil it is a bridge between two worlds.

"I finished school here in 1997," says Mohammed Babu, a 20-year-old university student and alumnus of the Sangoil Underprivileged Children Preparatory Education Project School, known as UCPEP. "When the school was built, it was very nearby, so it gave me an opportunity. …The next closest school was [more than 3 miles] away."

Easily melding the look of a sleekly styled white T-shirt and a traditional sarong, Mohammed could be the picture of the Sangoil story—a young man who grew up poor, had an early chance at education, and is today mixing readily in an urban world his parents could not imagine.

I met Mohammed through my work with Catholic Relief Services, which is working with local partner agency Caritas Bangladesh on a unique education project. In the remote Chapainawabgonj district of northwest Bangladesh, underprivileged children receive valuable preschool education—an inaccessible option for most young children in impoverished rural Bangladesh. Caritas built the present-day Sangoil School in 1997 to replace a dilapidated former school building.

As a young student here, Mohammed Babu was among the first graduates of the school, leaving after completing the four-year program to enter the government primary school system—the ultimate goal of the project. Where many local children simply work with their families in their preschool years, Mohammed's exposure to the student-centered teaching methods at Sangoil prepared him well for formal government schooling. Today, he is studying honors statistics at the university in Rajshahi city, about two-and-a-half hours away.

'The Light of Education'

"[As a child] I had a desire to be educated," Mohammed says. "But if this school was not here, it would have been difficult."

Such challenges are not uncommon in rural Bangladesh, where as many as half of the country's 153 million people live at or below the poverty line. For many, even free education is a luxury they cannot afford, because children are required to work on family farms. Over many long years, that mindset has hardened, and education simply is not a priority in areas where schools are far apart and difficult to access daily. Only 67 percent of Bangladesh's children complete primary school, and the country has a 40 percent adult literacy rate.

Through the Sangoil School, Catholic Relief Services is supporting 197 schools across Bangladesh. Each provides critically needed early childhood education to impoverished youth, and a new generation of children have opportunities their parents did not have. CRS assists the schools with learning materials for children, salaries for staff and training for teachers in methods that center on children's participation.

Now, with a school so close and trained teachers readily available, the importance of education is a common topic among local parents. They pool the money they raise through Caritas income-generation projects to support the Sangoil School.

"The parents before didn't educate their children," Mohammed says. "But when they started this school, all of the parents wanted to take the light of education for their children."

In all, 114 similar CRS-supported schools have already become totally self-sufficient within their communities, or have been subsumed into nearby government primary schools. While the Sangoil School provides education from preschool through grade two, CRS will focus future support on early childhood development for children who are most in need of schooling—at an age at which education has lasting benefits.

Mohammed Babu knows firsthand what those benefits can be. Once he receives his degree in statistics, Mohammed says he wants to use his education to teach others, a desire instilled, perhaps, from his earliest years in the Sangoil School.

"Sometimes when I come home from university I visit the school and teach math classes," Mohammed says. "Today the children are more curious than in our time—they want to learn. It feels good to come back."

David Snyder is a photojournalist who has traveled to more than 30 countries with CRS.