Eglal's ABC School

Today I went with a couple spouses to Eglal's ABC School in Bashundhara.  Bashundhara is another neighborhood in Dhaka that is only 5 miles from our apartment, but took us over 45 minutes to get there due to traffic.

The school was started 12 years ago by a Bangladeshi woman who wanted to help underprivileged children living in the slums get a proper education.  She and her staff head out to the slums and hand pick children to start in their kindergarten class.  As you can imagine, it is incredibly hard to choose which children she can help, as they can only take in 20 children per year.  The school pays for everything: uniforms, breakfast, lunch, books, etc.  They even provide a bowl of rice for each child to take home every day.

The school has a total of 86 students in kindergarten through 6th grade.  Once they graduate from this school, they are placed in a public school through the 10th grade.  A few of the students had actually graduated from both the ABC school and the 10th grade to come back and teach at the ABC school.  

Whenever we entered a classroom, the children would stand up and say hello.  They were learning both English and Bangla.

One of the spouses I went with had been to the school 4 times before.  He had gotten to know the children, and would bring something with him every visit.  Today he brought water, cookies, and soccer balls.

I really enjoyed my visit to the school, and I hope to go back sometime soon.  The students also come to the American International School of Dhaka on a couple Saturdays per month for tutoring.  They are coming this Saturday, and we hope to visit and spend some time with the students.