Janu is president of the Omarpur Child Centre in Bangladesh
Janu, is secretary of the Omarpur Women's Group and Chair of the Omarpur Child Centre in Bangladesh. She lives in the village of Omarpur with her three children while her husband works abroad. She recently won the election to become the first female chair of the Omarpur Primary School Committee. Thanks to her, the school has been able to benefit from a deep restructuring plan that allows young students to learn safely.
The three classrooms that make up the school suffered extensive damage in 2017, 2019 and 2020 due to heavy flooding. The schoolyard was always filled with water during the rainy season and could not be used for studying, playing, or holding assemblies. In addition to this, the only bathroom accessible by students and teachers was in very poor condition.
With our local partner, VARD, we worked alongside Janu and the other members of the school commission (SMC), to develop and implement a renovation plan that included, repairing classroom floors, raising the courtyard and protecting it with walls, installing a block of separate bathrooms for boys and girls, and creating areas dedicated to hand washing.
Janu contributed to the project in a fundamental way: she analyzed the costs necessary to complete the renovations checking on the progress during the construction, ensuring good quality materials were used. She also submitted a request to receive funds from the executive office of the Upazila Shikka and asked to create a grove of trees around the school, which are very useful for managing floods.
The funds from Upazila Shikka also contributed to investments that will also be used in the future to better maintain the classrooms, the courtyard and the bathrooms.
"We developed the entire renovation plan of the school," Janu told us, "approving the drawings and ensuring the quality of the work with inspections and supervision of the activities. Now the children will be able to attend the assemblies every day to sing the national anthem together every morning. Thanks to this new courtyard, we have an added value compared to other schools and we can offer sports activities that will attract more children, discouraging early school leaving. Finally, the people of the village will be able to find a safe haven in the school in case of environmental disasters", she added.
Photocredit: Md Rafiqul Islam, Project Engineer, VARD.