Free-of-cost School for Underprivileged Children

‘This project report is a submission to GlobalGiving’s 2017 Fail Forward Contest, where organizations are asked to share a story of when they tried something new that didn’t go as planned and how they learned from it. Enjoy!’

JAAGO Foundation idealizes its employees and the children and youth, who it works for, as family. The small family of 17 underprivileged children back in 2007 has now become extended in 2017 with 11500 children and 25000 young volunteers. This growth has introduced JAAGO as one of the fastest growing organizations in Bangladesh. JAAGO’s success in improving the living standard of the impoverished children and engaging the youth from different backgrounds in the process of national development has been achieved not just because of the devotion and efficiency of its workforce but also for its failed attempts and learnings from them to go forward.  

JAAGO began its journey taking the holistic approach to cater the educational needs of the impoverished children, which included cost free quality schooling, healthcare, supply of nutritious food and fruits, uniform, soap and other necessary stuffs for healthy and hygienic living, and so on. Despite these cares and services, the school management found the students inattentive in classroom and absent from school. The administration deemed it alarming because the irregular students would get dropped out at one point of time. This irregularity posed threats to JAAGO’s mission, breaking the cycle of poverty through spreading the light of quality education among the children from poverty stricken families. At that time, students at JAAGO schools were receiving English Medium schooling under conventional teaching system. Teachers started becoming strict towards the students about their attendance and completion of homework to make sure they wouldn’t miss the class fearing the punishment. Practice of this kind is prevalent in Bangladesh. The enactment of hard rules worked counterproductively, as the number of irregular students grew bigger. The students of upper classes (Iv-VIII) were trying not to come to school finding the lessons too hard for them. As Afroza, a student of Class VI said, "I don't want to go to JAAGO School because the lessons are hard and I don't understand them".  Since the parents were illiterate and more willing to send their children to workplace instead of school owing to extreme poverty, they found this reluctance grown among their children as a pretext. This was reflected in Afroza’s mother’s words. She said, “My daughter does not want to go to school. I would rather send her for work". Moreover, these parents didn’t have any idea about English Medium international curriculum; hence, they were doubtful about their children’s future prospect with such education.   

Having failed to keep the students attentive in classroom, the school administration realized the process was not appropriate for the students, especially of this underprivileged background. The students from well-to-do and educated families can resort to taking help from house tutors or other family members if they find any lesson complicated or illusive. JAAGO’s students, in contrary, do not have such privilege. From this observation, the management came to understand the necessity of innovative interventions to change the situation. Consequently, the started working on failing forward by using the learned lessons from failures.      

JAAGO shifted the curriculum from English Medium to NCTB (National Curriculum and Textbook Board) English Version so that the students of such communities can cope with the lessons and have English language proficiency to compete globally, as well. Its efforts to change the earlier failure into success was not limited to shifting the curriculum. The school management initiated pedagogical interventions by developing audio-visual contents for lesson delivery to attract the students to the classroom. Teachers were also trained to conduct the classes in the friendliest and most suitable ways for these children. Students of the Reception and Nursery Classes, who would flee from school if the conventional lesson memorizing and cramming were continued, find the classroom much entertaining these days because they learn from cartoons and in singing-dancing approach. JAAGO believes, if schooling does not help the students acquire skills it can never be thought standard.  Considering its findings on conventional schooling, JAAGO has made the lesson delivery system interactive. Students of upper classes at JAAGO Schools learn through the demonstrative presentation on the class contents, i.e., they are taken to muddy lands when lessons on soil are taught, and given different science projects, etc. These interactive and demonstration based class sessions, intensive care from the teachers, and other necessary nourishments have made the students feel and strengthen their attachments with the school. Class lessons are no longer difficult to them and, as a result, school is no more a scary place to go. 

The success in making the students attentive in classroom did not suffice to prevent their absence from schools, as the parents kept trying to send the male children to work and marry their girls off. This failure within the success made the administration take one further step to buttress the already achieved outcomes and ensure comprehensive triumph over remaining challenges. They launched parents counselling to help them understand the importance of their children’s education. JAAGO recruited community officers from the locals of school areas and trained them to be motivational counsellor for the parents. They sit with the parents, who are day laborers, rickshaw pullers, and some of them are even drug addicts. The community officers motivate the parents in various ways and guide them on how to grow their children as enlightened, respectful, educated, and financially empowered individuals what they are not. As Ms. Sharmin, one of the community officers at JAAGO Foundation School Rayer Bazar Branch, says, “Once a teacher told me about a child whose father beats him and his mother every night. The father is an alcoholic and doesn’t earn for the family but drinks whole night long spending the penny his wife earns working as housemaid. I requested the father to talk to me and he talked, even though he was showing his heavy unwillingness at the beginning.  Talking to him for more than an hour, I asked to imagine a night his son beating him after getting drunk. I also asked him, do you want see your son alcoholic, drug addict, frustrated, and workless like you? No, he replied and expressed how wildest the imagination was. He later took an oath to try quitting alcohol and go for work by himself. Since then, he has never missed any counselling sessions and been encouraging other parents to send their kids to JAAGO school.” The parent counselling initiative paid off this way encouraging 23000 parents across the country about their children’s education.                                           

JAAGO family is now well-grown and getting expanded every year with the enrollment of new children. It is also planning to penetrate the government primary schools with its pedagogical interventions in partnership with the Education Ministry and ICT Division. Parents now want their children to receive education at JAAGO schools. Children, even of the marginalized hill tracts areas under Chittagong Division, ask their parents to prepare them early in the morning, although they have to climb hill to reach the school. For instance, JAAGO Foundation School Bandarban Branch has currently 96 students (Reception to Class III), where a government primary school of adjacent area has only 19 students (Class I-V). Parents love JAAGO schools as do their children. Afroza, who didn’t want to come to school, now says to her teacher, "Miss, I like coming to school, It's fun. We do so many things together in school." Her mother’s words have also changed, who says, I now give the full responsibility of my daughter's education to JAAGO." JAAGO Foundation would have never seen this enormous success had it not had those failures. Therefore, JAAGO administration believes in the words of Henry Ford, “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”