Our target is to create an education model that can be implemented all over the country to greatly improve the quality of education provided in the schools.
We aim to contribute to an education system that ensures quality and sustainability in order to build an enlightened generation of our country.
The root cause of discrepancies in the job market lies in the early years of education. Children are crammed into a factory model that fails to prepare them for jobs that are yet to exist. To break this vicious cycle with a human-centric approach, we wanted to be more aware of how, where and who we piloted our first intervention with.
We selected the children of factory workers in Tangail, Mirzapur, as our sample population and started conducting research to understand them better through a number of focused group discussions, home visits and interviews. Despite being blue-collar workers, the factory workers dreamed of prestigious, white-collar jobs for their children. To advance their dreams, we launched a low cost charter school 50 kilometers away from Dhaka in Tangail, Mirzapur.
We started gathering evidence in our school to gradually address the problems in the education system. Relentlessly, we came up with one solution after another to provide education that is relevant for now and the future. Gradually, we came up with an education model rooted in empathy, critical thinking, and collaborative problem-solving.
However, no problem can be solved without scale. Currently, by developing teachers using our evidence-based approaches, we scale our model across government and private, English, Bangla and Madrasah medium schools.
We started the school with 100 students in Tangail, Mirzapur, about 50 kilometers north of Dhaka. The first year we educated students up to grade 3, all children of industrial workers. We are now educating 200 children up to grade 7 - our goal is to grow with the students and add a new grade each year.
The school has a nominal fee, which adds a sense of accountability to the community and parents. A portion of Home Junctions sales, a retail outlet for home goods, goes to support Alokito Hridoy School.
We knew from the start that a building is not the heart of a school, but rather it is the teachers. We hire local teachers since we know they are the most knowledgeable about the area and the context. Teachers have an impact on students when they connect with them and are interested to learn more about them. We invest heavily in teacher training to nurture and empower them as the empathetic, 21st century facilitators and the catalyst of change in the school and community. .
Our teacher training approaches have expanded beyond the walls of Alokito Hridoy. We have partnered with the government, non-government and private schools to work on teacher development in primary and secondary education.Our training modules are designed for Bangla, English, Madrasah medium schools across the country and has the potential to bridge these silos with the hope of ensuring access to quality education for all.