Every monsoon, Natore in western Bangladesh is affected by rising water levels, rain and the floods making it difficult for students in local villages to attend school. Government-run schools become inaccessible, making it impossible to travel unless one owns a boat.

Students filing out of a boating school.
Students filing out of a boating school.

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Every monsoon, Natore in western Bangladesh is affected by rising water levels. The rain and the floods make it difficult for students in the local villages to attend school. The government-run schools either close down or all the paths leading to them go under water, making it impossible to travel unless one owns a boat.

Forty-year-old Mohammed Rezwan, who grew up in this region, has known the struggles of the residents too well. An architect by profession, Rezwan thought that if the children couldn’t go to the schools, then the schools should come to them.

That idea eventually led to the creation of “floating schools” plying along the Chalan Beel, the largest billabong in Bangladesh’s Natore district. “I remember how difficult it was for my friends to go to school. Back then, my family owned a boat, so I didn’t face any problems, but it wasn’t the same for my friends. Owning a boat then was equivalent to having a car in Dhaka today,” he says.

In 1997, after he graduated from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), the top engineering institute in the country, he decided to address the issue. “I had around Tk 20,000 ($300) in my pocket, a Pentium 1 computer and a strong belief. The idea struck me when I saw how dependent residents in the village were on boats. I thought to myself, if they can set up markets on boats, why couldn’t we set up schools? My family didn’t want me to take such a huge risk, but I saw it differently. It was a good time to enter the NGO world in Bangladesh and I knew that if we worked hard, we would be able to get funding in two years,” says Rezwan.

A lot of attention went into creating the perfect boat that would withstand the vagaries of weather and have adequate space. “We initially tried working with local boats, but that didn’t work out. So I made a design and gave it to the boat makers,” he says. His NGO, Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha, created its first boat in 2002 and today claims to have built 22 school boats which ply along the Atrai, Gumani and the Baral rivers, teaching around 2,000 students in the Singra Upazila in Natore district, besides some areas in the Pabna district.

The group received its first funding in 2005 — $5,000 from the Global Fund for Children. After the initial donation, they received $100,000 from the Levi Strauss Foundation and one million dollars more from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. These helped the organisation expand. Their work has won them several awards, and, according to Rezwan, their module is now being replicated in seven countries, including India, Pakistan and the Philippines, through the United Nations.

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