11 - Rural Technology for the Landless in Bangladesh

Abstract

This chapter describes a project focusing on providing rural technology for the landless in Bangladesh. The center for Mass Education in Science started an experimental rural technical school in the village Suruj in Tangail District in 1981. This has been a modest grass-roots establishment to provide disadvantaged boys and girls with a basic education for improving the quality of their lives while learning and practicing a trade useful to the community to become an income-earning member of the family. The school is also meant to serve the community as a rural technology centre by undertaking repairs, maintenance, fabrication and such other things, as well as training. A bamboo-tin structure on donated land, the school campus is homogeneous with the surrounding rural scene with its trees, vegetable garden, minipond, and make-shift workshop. Much of the furniture and facilities in the school are actually made there, some by the students themselves. One important aspects of the school is a curriculum relevant to skill development and of immediate use to the rural life and productivity. This is a condensed package preparing the students to take their place as income-earning members in the community