The journey of alternative education in rural communities continues through a united approach
Green Ink, Grow Your Reader Foundation, along with Barishal Youth Society (BYS), have come together to develop a sustainable self designed education-based project that will aim to achieve a particular way of learning. The organizations will interchange their expertise and knowledge to implement all the project activities within targeted zones starting from Barishal.
On July 6, 2022, the three organizations gathered to sign the Memorandum of Understanding to enhance their relationship for the betterment of the community. Ehsan Kabir, CEO of Green Ink, Sadia Jafrin Khan, CEO of Grow Your Reader Foundation and Faez Belal, Founder of BYS were present in the MOU signing ceremony. The project's objective is to introduce the concept of alternative education among marginalized communities living in both rural and urban regions of Bangladesh. The project also aims to reduce the digital gap between privileged and non-privileged communities by introducing a method of self-designed learning as an alternative form of acquiring knowledge.
By choosing the most vulnerable zones in the area, the program will start operating in Bangladesh's Barishal region. A three-wheeled van will be converted into a mobile library with unique branding that will go across Barishal's various neighborhoods. In the low-income communities of the Barishal region, where access to education is difficult for many people due to the economic crisis and a lack of resources like books, mobile devices, computers, laptops, the internet, etc. that are needed to acquire knowledge, the three-wheeled mobile library will create a proper learning environment. Through innovative methods, the initiative provides the most disadvantaged with a learning platform.
The 'WoW (Wheels of Wisdom) project' by Grow Your Reader Foundation began its journey at the very first phase of the nation-wise lockdown in Bangladesh.The primary goal of the project was to provide education to the students belonging to the underprivileged communities. WoW won the Electric Information For Libraries (EIFL) 15th Library Innovation Award supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Global Libraries Programme for the public libraries contributing to education recovery during the COVID-19 pandemic across the world. On the other hand, BYS and Green Ink in partnership with Project Defy India has introduced an alternative method of self designed learning center "Nook" in Bangladesh at the city of Barisal during Covid-19 lockdown, in order to satisfy the educational needs of the marginalized communities. Nook model has been recognized among 100 inspiring innovations that are changing the face of education in 2021 by HundrED.
Through this partnership, the capacity of WoW will be enhanced to provide more support to the marginalized community in a better way where the under-resourced community will get the opportunity to learn about self-designing learning to be a global citizen like a very resourceful community.
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