STREET SMART – Education for Rohingya children

A street school for street children

The overcrowded camps in Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh has officially been recognised as the largest refugee camp in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people are crammed into this small space where poverty and disease are rife.

At Salam Charity, we believe the future of our children depends on education. Only through educating our youngsters can we hope to lead them out of poverty. That is why we have set up our Street-Smart schools. We understand that not all children can go to school because they so often must work to provide for their families, that’s why we have decided to take the schools to them.

How it works

Our carefully selected teachers take their school equipment including blackboards, textbooks and mats and set up school in the streets of the Rohingya Camp. We are limited to what we can teach because of the restrictions placed on the camps but we help children with basic education, learning through play as well as offering counselling services for the children.

The programme has been an overwhelming success with 30 students who regularly attend school over 4 evenings of the week. Classes are held in the evening to allow the children to continue to work to help their families but ensuring that they learn how to read and write.

There are 2 teachers, who are refugees themselves, that teach 4 nights per week. The children are aged between 6-12 and are taught basic language and numeracy.

More needs to be done

The success of Street-Smart has shown the great need to spread this programme across all areas of the camp. With your help we can get these children the education they so vitally need. It costs £1000 per Street School per month which pays for teachers, rent, textbooks, mats, blackboards, writing slates, notepads, pens/pencils and school bags.

Please give what you can and we can change these children’s lives for the better.