How Friendship’s highly successful Secondary Education Programme became a ray of hope that uplifted dropout students in Bangladesh’s vulnerable coastal areas
By Iffat Ara Sharmeen,
16 March 2026
For more than 20 years, Friendship has been working in the remote, inaccessible char islands in northern Bangladesh, where communities constantly battle with climate hostilities that make life an inescapable cycle of loss and renewal. To achieve sustainable, integrated development, quality education has been a key element. Friendship, ERIKS, and Community Development Centre (CODEC) took this thought process together to the southern coastal communities in Bangladesh through the Shwopner Thikana education project.
A Friendship Replication Project that Transformed Lives
Since 2015, Friendship has been implementing its Secondary Education Programme among the char islands of Gaibandha and Kurigram with the support of ERIKS and other development partners. The education model uses an alternative ICT-based blended approach that is currently benefiting 5,643 students and 980 adult learners. It continues to serve disadvantaged children for whom educational opportunities were almost non-existent.
In 2020, an external evaluation team found the programme to be a model approach and recommended replicating it in other communities. At the time, ERIKS was also actively engaged with CODEC, which empowers adolescent education and wellbeing in the southern districts. These two partnerships inspired ERIKS to match Friendship with CODEC. The matchmaking led to Shwopner Thikana, which literally translates to “dream destination,” and to a project that adopted Friendship’s Secondary Education Programme for adolescent dropouts in the southern coastal communities. While Friendship served as a technical partner, CODEC implemented the project.
An Impactful Partnership
As a technical partner, Friendship provided expertise and guidance in all aspects. Regular classroom observations were conducted to assess teacher skills and student engagement and identify needs accordingly. The observations were addressed through refresher training sessions, demo classes, feedback, and hands-on mentoring to strengthen teachers’ pedagogical skills and confidence in delivering ICT-supported teaching.
From 2023 to 2025, Friendship Technical Coordinators conducted 630 classroom visits to contribute to continuous improvement in teaching and classroom activity. Students were also assessed to identify competency and knowledge gaps since they were restarting their formal education post-dropout. Remedial plans were developed to cater to the diverse needs of learners to improve their academic outcomes. Teachers were trained via initial orientation sessions to implement the remedial plan alongside regular classes through group-based learning strategies, interactive classroom activities, and systematic homework monitoring.
Meetings with the School Management Committee (SMC) members were held to ensure community involvement and student turnout in Bridge school operations. Parents’ meetings fostered more parental involvement. Friendship also assisted CODEC in instilling some of its trademark Best Practices into the Bridge schools. CODEC established school libraries in all the Bridge schools to encourage reading and self-directed learning.
Shwopner Thikana project became a lighthouse for dropout youth in southern coastal districts who needed a nudge in the right direction towards education. Friendship’s training and continuous supervision strengthened the capacity of rural teachers to deliver ICT-based lessons aligned with the national curriculum in remote areas where technology is barely accessible. The programme gained strong support from the local government and rural communities. They recognised the initiative’s success and supported its continuation in underserved coastal communities.
