STREET SCHOOL

If you take a walk in the streets of Shahbagh on a weekday afternoon, you will come across a sight that warms your heart. Around fifty to eighty street children will be sitting on the streets on old sheets, plastic bags, whatever they can find, and will be concentrating on their studies. In front of this makeshift classroom will be a young teacher, at the blackboard, trying to conduct a noisy class. This extraordinary school, is called Prothom Shurjo, and was founded by Mohammad Nasiruddin Rubel in 2010. 
"I had recently moved to Dhaka, when I met a child on the street who asked me to buy him some food," says Rubel, "I asked him about his life and he told me he had no one except a sister—she turned out to be a sex worker who looked out for him but was not related to him. This incident stayed with me and I decided to do something for street children. I would converse with them whenever I had the chance and one day, while I was walking in Shahbagh, I had a chat with a few of them who were playing football on the street," he tells us. "When I asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up, and some said they wanted to become drivers while others wanted to be doctors and engineers. On impulse, I offered to teach them right there on the streets as none of them had the means to go to school and earned a living by begging or collecting trash."
Thus began this wonderful endeavor in which Rubel has been assisted by his professor who financed the purchase of their very first schoolbooks, and volunteers from local universities and young professionals who shared his sentiments, "We started with 5 or 6 children, but slowly the number of students increased. It became fun for us, as we worked as a team," says Rubel. "A man named Mr Nuruzzaman who lives in the area helped us purchase some blackboards and we were all set. Our first year, we helped 35 students get through pre- school, and enrolled them into government schools for primary education. We started helping them do their homework here as well as many of them live on the sidewalk, slums and environments which are not conducive to studying," he explains. "Every year we would take a batch of about 35 students and enroll them into primary school. This year 6 of our students completed 5th grade and one had a straight A+ result." 
Aside from this school, Rubel and his group have also built a shelter for their female students who are more vulnerable to sexual abuse. "It has a capacity for 20 girls at the moment--some of whom lived under plastic bags on the streets and were likely to go into the sex trade. A man from Japan, who saw our school decided to help us out with this shelter," explains Rubel. "We get students from Bangla Motor, Hatirpul, Shahbagh and nearby areas, but we want to expand more in the future. The people in the area are quite helpful and allow us to use the streets. The police have also been helpful in letting us use the space. We need funding for future expansion which we hope to get from the private sector and through individual donations."