STREET SMART – Education for Rohingya children

A street school for street children

The overcrowded camps in Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh has officially been recognised as the largest refugee camp in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people are crammed into this small space where poverty and disease are rife.

At Qard Hasan, we believe the future of our children depends on their ability to access education. Only through educating the younger generation can there be hope for them make thier way out of poverty. That is why we have set up our Street-Smart schools. We understand that not all children can go to school because they often must work during the day to provide for their families, and to tackle this, our program takes schooling and education to them at their own time instead.

How it works

Our carefully selected teachers take their school equipment including blackboards, textbooks and mats and set up school in the streets of the Rohingya Camp. We are limited to what we can teach because of the restrictions placed on the camps but we help children with basic education, allowing them to learn through play, and also offer counselling services for them for psychosocial development.

The program has been an overwhelming success with 30 students who regularly attend school, 4 evenings of the week. Classes are specifically held in the evening to allow the children to continue to work to help their families during the day, while still learning basics including literacy and arithmetic.

The program employs 2 teachers who are refugees themselves, that teach 4 nights per week. The children are aged between 6-12 and are taught basic literacy and numeracy.

More needs to be done

The success of Street-Smart has shown the great need to spread this program across all areas of the camp. With your help we can get these children the education they so vitally need. It costs $1,600 per Street School per month which pays for teachers, rent, textbooks, mats, blackboards, writing slates, notepads, pens/pencils and school bags.

Please give what you can and help us change these children’s lives for the better.