How could you not want the best and brightest future for this little munchkin? I met this happy, inquisitive and cheeky little man in a one room corrugated iron 'house' in a slum next to a railway in Chittagong. He totally stole my heart!
My colleague Dr Pearl and I were meeting with a group of women from the slum area as part of our preliminary community assessment for possible WV development with their community. In the meeting we asked the women about their education, family, economic opportunities, health care, sanitation, challenges and hopes for the future. What stuck with me most was that 90% of the kids in this slum don't go past Grade 2 schooling. And the education is not at a proper government school, but two hours per day from a lady in the area who can read and write. At around 8-10 years old, most of the girls are home helping their mothers, and the boys in this community are working; collecting rubbish, cutting wood, assisting in the local dorcan (shop). Government education is free and there is an allowance for school books and pens, but there isn't a school in this slum and the parents don't want the kids to travel, and they say they need the income from their sons working. Opportunity on this side of the tracks is in short supply.
At the end of the group session, the mothers who attended were required to sign their name to an attendance sheet. It was then that I understood that depriving kids of education is depriving them of not just opportunity but also of future dignity - over half the women in this group had to give a charcoal ash thumb print, because they did not know how to write their own name.
I'm praying that the cheeky munchkin in the first pics will make it adulthood with opportunity and dignity in tact.
No comments:
Post a Comment