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CHOLEN: Approach to Promote Education in
Ethnic Communities in Bangladesh
Background
Bangladesh has more than 15 ethnic communities who live in different parts of the country but the Southeast part of the country has the major concentration of the ethnic groups and also has a wide diversity among the groups. This part of the country, commonly known as CHT (Chittagong Hill Tracts), is different from the rest of the country in many ways. This is a hilly terrain, unlike the rest of the country, and is occupied by 12 major ethnic groups and having its own traditional administration in addition to that of Central Government. CHT is rich in cultural diversity and natural resources but unfortunately it is also one of most neglected area with a large portion of people living below the poverty line.
Formal education for children is not a priority need for the people of CHT as they have to struggle everyday to feed their families at least one meal a day. The normal pattern of life is that all members of the family are busy in their survival needs, children are as engaged as adults in cultivation, cooking, gathering fire wood, fetching water, weaving clothes, repairing houses, rearing animals and looking after the young ones. On top of such hardship the people have been afflicted from forced settlements, displacements and armed conflicts, making their lives miserable and insecure. The Government of Bangladesh contributed very little for development and peace making which has greatly hindered the lives of the communities. In such context, the children's education did not get much attention from any corners, neither from the community nor from the State.
CHOLEN as an Education Project
An Education project of CARE-Bangladesh – CHOLEN- started operating in the CHT since May 2000 after a comprehensive livelihood assessment of the region. The word CHOLEN is an abbreviation for the project's full name – CHT Children's Opportunity for Learning Enhanced. The word also means "Let's Go" in Bangla signifying the project's effort to move forward and bring changes in the quality of life through education. In order to attain its goal, which is to increase educational achievement of CHT children, CHOLEN focuses on three main objectives: to increase access to basic education, to improve quality of basic education and to enhance system of education through increasing accountability and capacity building. At the initial stage the project had only 25 schools and later with financial support it has expanded to cover 180 schools (66% government schools, 18% non-government registered schools where 80% of teachers salary are borne by the government and 15% community schools which do not have any financial assistance from the government) and more that 15,000 children. The project is sponsored by USAID and CARE-USA.
CHOLEN works with formal schools and has selected those schools which had become non-functional due to various reasons like absence of teachers, displacement of communities, poor structure, poor management, lack of essential facilities, etc. Most of these schools did not have a management committee and if they had it was only in paper nothing functional. In many of the schools children did not have books for learning and learning aids like charts and maps were too much to expect. These schools also lacked the essential conditions for children to come, e.g. there were no toilets, inadequate water supply, difficult roads, no playground, etc. CHOLEN took the challenge to improve the poor conditions of schools and make them function effectively so that the children of indigenous communities have the opportunity to complete their basic education of primary level.
Girls without basic education
Changes brought by CHOLEN
The experiences from piloting the project with 25 schools enabled CHOLEN to plan and implement its activities in an effective manner to enhance educational opportunities and achievements for the CHT children. Following are some changes that the project was able to bring in the CHT schools:
- All CHOLEN schools now have teachers who are regularly attending classes.
- The schools have School Management Committees and Mothers Groups who are active and taking responsibilities to manage and improve the schools.
- Most of the schools now also have Parents Teachers Association that are gradually showing interest in school affairs and participate actively whenever there is an event in school.
- The school organizes social events for the community to participate and encourage wider interaction of children with the community.
- The management committees are contributing in many ways to improve the schools, e.g. they gave free labor in construction or repairing of schools, repaired roads, provided playing items for children, negotiated with the education agency to provided sufficient text books for their children. They also regularly monitor the attendance of teachers and children and are more concerned about their children's education.
- Children are now attending classes regularly. However there still exists the issue of drop-out but the rate is much lower, from 40% to 25%.
- Enrollment has also significantly increased, especially for communities that are located in very remote areas.
- The community has built good relationship with local authority and in some cases very good support was provided from the government agencies to the community schools, such as, construction of new school building, installed latrines and tube-well in schools, placement of teachers in vacant positions or for teachers who were absent for long period, distributing text-books for community schools, etc. and also frequency of visiting schools by government officials has increased as a result of greater participation of the community people in school affairs.
- Teachers have started using the active-learning pedagogy, for which they were trained, for greater participation of children in lesson learning.
- Teachers are now increasingly using the mother-tongue of children in schools resulting to better communication between teachers and students. However Bangla remains the major media of instruction.
Girls in school
Effective Strategies of the project
Bringing the desired changes in such a short duration was quite challenging for CHOLEN. However some the strategies proved to be effective and practical and are briefly mentioned as follows:
1. Community ownership: The project gives a lot of emphasis to build community ownership and participation for children's education. A great deal of time is spent for this purpose and it is considered as the foundation for all other project activities. Moreover as community mobilization remains a continuous process there occurs a gradual shift in the focus. For example, at the preliminary stage more emphasis is given to raise the demand for education, then formation of an active management committee and educating them on their roles and responsibilities, then establishing linkages with the local authorities and so on. Thus capacity building of the local people is one of the most important tasks of the project.
2. Involvement of Local Organization: The project activities are implemented through local non-government organizations who are partners of CARE. The local partners have a better linkage and understanding of the communities and they are more acceptable than the people of the plain land therefore establishing rapport and gaining trust from the community is easier for the project. Moreover the local organizations also feel the responsibility to improve the situation of education in their own land, thus commitment level is high.
3. Linkages with the local and administrative authorities: This strategy has proved effective in terms of resource mobilization and obtaining support from the government in improving school conditions, some such examples are mentioned above. The project facilitates the process through which the local people are in touch with the local authorities and they can express their needs and demand of support to meet their needs.
4. Teacher Training: Developing quality of teachers is one of the most important component of the project and there is continuous effort to fulfill this objective. It is believed that teachers are the key to improved learning and participatory classroom management. CHOLEN provides training to teachers on child-centered and active-learning pedagogy. The teachers who were all practicing the traditional method of rote memorization for learning have recently started to take a new approach of activity based learning.
However with all that has been achieved so far there is still a long to go to achieve the project goal. Challenges remains with multi-dimensional facets. There are many issues that need to be dealt with to improve the education status of the CHT. There still exists a situation where there is policy gaps, lack of support and resources, and most of all the thrust to accept education as a means to overcome poverty and improve quality of life. CHOLEN is hopeful that together with other key players in the same field and with concerted effort the obstacles will be removed and greater opportunities of quality education will be accessible to all children of CHT.
Munmum Salma Chowdhury is the Project Coordinator of Education for CARE in Bangladesh. She has been working in the development field for nine years with experience in Gender and Development, Self-Reliance of Women, Education, and Children and Development. You can reach her by writing CARE Bangladesh, Pragati RPR Center (8th Floor), 20-21 Kawran Bazar, Dhaka, Bangladesh or by emailing at munmun@carebangladesh.org.
© December 2003 New Horizons for Learning
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