News A new veranda school in Bagutia

In January, we started a new veranda school in Bagutia, a small island in the river Padna, a good 1.5 hours’ (bumpy) drive from our center.

We started the veranda school there at the request of a local council member, who had heard about our veranda schools from his colleagues and convinced us of the necessity. Bagutia has no schools, health centers or doctors. There is no public transportation, only horse-drawn carts. Families in Bagutia tend to be large and on average, women are married by the age of twelve or thirteen. The children with disabilities who live there also have additional health issues such as pneumonia, heart problems and bedsores.

The villagers live off the river, but the river also takes lives. Houses disappear due to erosion during the rainy season. And overfishing in India and northern Bangladesh has taken away the villagers’ main source of income. The soil is fertile, but the harvests do not yield much and nothing can be grown during the monsoon. In addition to a veranda school, we also started focus group discussions and formed an anti-violence committee.

It is wonderful to see how our staff member Dalima Rahman corrects the imams and how she talks effortlessly about violence against women and women’s rights. You can see that she makes people think and encourages mothers. Especially for the men: “A child with disabilities is not the woman’s fault and both parents are responsible for the child.” It’s great that we started in such a remote place.