Free-of-cost School for Underprivileged Children

Fail Forward Contest 2016 | Learning through Failure

Together We Stand Strong

JAAGO Foundation started its journey on 14th April, 2007 when Korvi Rakshand and his friends rented a single room in Dhaka Rayer Bazar slum area. With a single dream of changing the lives of the children in the area, Korvi and his friends began teaching the 17 children who showed up, with only a blackboard, chalks and a mat. 

JAAGO Foundation is a civil society organization run by a group of dedicated youth working towards alleviating poverty and illiteracy from the face of Bangladesh with The mission & vision to break the cycle of poverty through quality education and rebuilding our nation; bringing forth positive changes in the World. JAAGO founded the first ever free-of-cost International Standard School exclusively for the underprivileged children of Bangladesh. In 9 years from 17 children now we have 2200 children in 13 JAAGO Schools. We at JAAGO support the creativeness of our children and value their input in society by providing education in the English version under NCTB (National Curriculum Textbook Board). JAAGO aims to bring about substantial improvement in the lives of disadvantaged people with special emphasis on their literacy and nourishment. 

In these 9 years of our travelogue, JAAGO has faced many threats to its existence, with educating the community about our vision at the heart of these challenges. Initially the local community thought that we were a Christian missionary, bent on converting them (this case was intense as Bangladesh is a Muslim Country and zones where we operate are slum areas lacking open mindset amongst the local community); and later they doubted our seriousness in our mission. Since then, we have faced further problems within this community, such as child marriage, lack of funds and so on. To our credit, despite everything, we learned from our failures, we designed effective logical strategies to merge in and we’ve forged ahead.

We believe that the main problems we face in achieving our goals are the conditions of the poor community. This stems from the following issues –

• More often than not young children are seen as earners for the family and as a result these children are sent to work, causing them to relinquish their education.

• Most of the children suffer from malnutrition and improper diets. As a result, their health and physical condition cause them to miss school, and at times drop out completely. We try to alleviate this problem by providing them with proper diets and health check-ups.

Though these problems are decreasing day by day, we still face people who cannot appreciate our cause and often act as obstacles in our path.

But today, we want to share a sensitive story here; phase that propelled every single member of JAAGO to land in together and find a solution because failure kept dodging us in the process. We went restless as this was a complete ambush by this situation that we never thought would be so tough to overcome. Despite repeated attempts by the government and various NGOs, the poorer communities of Bangladesh are still prone to the habit of early marriages. As a result many young girls are forced to give up their education to get married. These girls later give birth to young children who cannot appreciate the importance of education, and thus fall into the cycle of poverty and illiteracy.

 A bright student from our JAAGO School, Alishah was preparing to appear for the Junior School Certificate examination (certifying examination of Class 8) last year. She lived with her mother in a slum and her mother used to work as office stuff at a local private educational institution. Before she could sit for the examination, her mother married her off due to the lack of security and social pressure. Though Alishah was keen to continue her education, the education department of JAAGO Foundation had to consider the situation and its effect on the other students of class if she was allowed to continue, as we highly discourage early marriage.  After a lot of reconsidering and upon the request of her mother and Alisha’s determination, she was allowed to appear the examination from our school.

However, considering the fact that this might encourage other parents to marry off their daughters the education department decided to declare Alisha as a dropout student.  The education department came up with a solution and made her admission in class 9 at a Public school, so that she can continue her education. 

Just when we thought the problem was solved, we were informed that Alishah has stopped attending classes and she was absent in the quarterly examination. When we reached her for an explanation, we got to know that she was struggling coping up with the teaching pattern of the public school. Being in a class of more than 100 students she could not get the extra attention of teachers that she needed, which she used to get in our school. She got demotivated and stopped attending classes so we tried to convince her to commence with classes regularly. When we failed to convince her, we wanted to take her back to our school as an exception so that she could continue her education. But her husband did not allow her to continue and she was being physically abused by her husband for her deep heeds. So she discontinued her studies and now she is a housewife living with her in-laws and husband.

This was really devastating, as Alishah was one of our enchanting students coming from an impoverished background. She was a glowing fallen star who even supported her teachers as a Teacher`s Assistant. Her caliber integrity was supposed to make her a future corporate leader or a government official; an educated and responsible citizen. An educated mother! We failed to save a National Asset, a propeller of Change in the world. 

Our senior batch children who were her friends went heartbroken to lose their friend moreover the girls were frightened that the same story might happen in their lives as well. But our teachers and Team JAAGO didn’t pause or give up. We battled forward; we kept trying to find a solution. We went door to door for expert advises, seeking support from the concerned society, the parents and everyone. In many cases we failed again getting negative feedbacks even threats on gun points. Yet our leader, Mr. Korvi Rakshand held on to the grip and said,” Believe in your passion, fight for your passion”.

We activated awareness campaigns with theatrical contents and discussions. Our youth program, Volunteer for Bangladesh came forward to back up. We called in experts from various fields to come forth and give counseling sessions with our children, their parents and even the local mass in individual communities. People`s views on Child Marriage caught attention, getting concerned about how important Education is for a girl child and how a marriage might just put a wall on her dreams. Guardians began to compromise with their decisions and agreed that Education is only tool that can elevate their children from the vicious wrath of poverty; having their daughter educated can save her family, siblings even the community itself. Local leaders came forward to confirm the security of young girls going to schools. Young men acted responsible and respectful. Through catering for the educational needs of children from socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds, coupled with the integration of numerous ‘Support Functions’, JAAGO Foundation aims to ensure the sustainable development of the financially insolvent communities of Bangladesh. Education is the most effective sustainable tool of social development. This is why JAAGO Foundation focuses on providing quality education to at least one child from one underprivileged family to grow his/her skill, which will help him/her to lift up the family. This child can make an impact at his/her community as well. In the process, we are detonating a sustainable run towards building a strong education background for the unprivileged children and a community securing an enlightened future for each of them stabilizing their family’s financial state as well. Students and their families will gain confidence to continue with the schooling and create space for many more fallen stars to shine. The development of one child can make a huge difference to his/her family in the future. And the development of the family will lead to the development of the nation through the self-sustainable community in the long run. 

Now, our students are happy! They know, events took place that has brought in positives vibes and rays of hope. Each of our fallen stars is at present boosted with confidence. Yet the struggle doesn't end here and there is a long way to go.

This was only possible, as we failed, as we were defeated but we got back into the ring stronger. We embraced failures as our friends.  

A very wise man named Winston Church once engraved a note for the world saying, “ Success is not Final, Failure is not Fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

With that note I would like to conclude by thanking all our supporters for having the faith upon us. We are grateful to each one of you out there with such courage to put your effort and confidence in decorating dreams of beautiful children like Alishah and thousands more like her. Together we stand strong. Let failures guide us to source of triumph. Let’s be the change!