Visiting the 51 DoPeace Learning Centers in Dhaka, Chattogram, Saidpur, and Rangpur has given me much hope that our disadvantaged children in slums can be educated en masse with a low cost model. The test case of 12,000 enrollments per year at the DoPeace schools provides a proven template that can be used at other slums. With five years of experience, we have started applying the same model in Karachi and inner-cities in the USA.
There is significant opportunity to make a difference in the lives of the ever growing slum population in maga cities that stands at one billion at this time. Leaving the children behind and uneducated has devastating economic repercussions, and is a flagrant violation of rights of children to have education.
It is now possible to educate millions of children in slums with a meagre cost of USD one per child per month, as we have proven with the DoPeace model by providing some 47,000 children-years of schooling in the last five years. The return on investment of educating the disadvantaged children is tremendous, particularly with this low cost.
The educational system must include the community as equal participants to be effective. Simply bringing the children to classrooms and totally disregarding the support system in homes and in the community is a recipe for failure. This has been witnessed time and again, and proven by the DoPeace implementation.
Our educational system addresses two audiences. One visible in the classroom and the other somewhat invisible that are the guardians and the community leadership. Aggressive communication with the invisible part is essential to make sure that education of the children are considered as the top priority after food, clothing, and shelter. This is the message we disseminate at each contact point.
All education must be geared towards attaining higher education in the future – the salvation of the children and permanent change depends on that. We diligently prepare and work to ingrain the vision of higher education in the children and the guardians.
I fully believe that millions of the children in urban slums can be brought rather quickly into the educational system and the world can be relieved from an impending disaster waiting to happen due to persistent inaction.
Photo at the DCPUK Rahmatulla Learning Center, Rangpur, Bangladesh
