The challenge of bringing quality education became more difficult to manage at the secondary level due to the scarcity of well-educated teachers in these remote communities.

As a result, secondary schools had to be taught through pre-recorded video classes screened through a solar-powered media system. The classes are assisted by trained facilitators who are able to contact the teachers as necessary.

The students in secondary schools have also achieved a high success rate at national exams. In villages with Friendship schools, child marriage has declined significantly, since parents are less willing to get their girls married if they gain an education and better life opportunities.

In 2020, the University of Dhaka’s Institute of Education and Research conducted an external evaluation of Friendship Education Programme, and recommended the Secondary Education model for replication.

We offer adults a second chance at education through our adult literacy program that teaches reading, writing and basic arithmetic.

This allows them to gain confidence in their lives and not depend on others for everyday tasks such as reading a signboard or a medicine label, keeping accounts of earnings and expenditures, and signing contracts.

In turn, these adult students are frequently motivated to send their children to Friendship schools.

Friendship employs almost 5,000 people, more than half of whom are recruited from within the communities where we operate.

These community workers include medic-aides, teachers, paralegals, skilled birth assistants, solar technicians, para-vets, etc., each of whom serve an essential purpose in improving the quality of life of their neighbours whilst being empowered themselves through training and connectivity with local governments and other resource points.

These people trained to work for Friendship are also given skills to be entrepreneurs so that they are empowered to be self-sufficient regardless of our presence.

Friendship works with active participation from local communities in all its interventions, both in determining their needs and addressing them. We form committees and groups within each community to take charge of social and environmental issues facing them.

Examples of this are the Friendship Community Civil Society Group (FCSG), the Friendship Disaster Management Committees (FDMC), the Friendship Community Development Committees (FCDC) or the School Management Committees (SMC).

Each of these have a defined purpose and members dedicated to those goals. For example, FCSGs are responsible for disseminating information within their community, identifying issues faced by the community and assisting them in finding the best means of resolving them.

Unlike inhabitants of the mainland, chars dwellers cannot always access the public services or institutions they are entitled to.

We have been able to offer remote communities access to paralegals to whom community members can address their questions. Our paralegals explain the basic legal, human and citizens’ rights, and describe the means for protecting and obtaining these rights.

They also help resolve common justice problems that community members face on a day-to-day basis and work to prevent child marriages.

Often the poor don’t have access to schooling and can’t read or write. It is therefore challenging to inform them of their rights.

One successful means of raising awareness is via theatre shows. The enactment of taboo topics (child marriage, dowry, child labour, domestic violence, etc.) conveys information and guidance in an entertaining manner, breaking down social barriers.

These shows are a powerful tool that help create an immediate and lasting positive impact on the community, through means that are highly engaging and much more likely to be internalised.

Bangladesh’s boat-building skills have been passed down orally from one generation to the next for millennia.

There are no written records documenting these ancient techniques, but they constitute a unique heritage of the most diverse fleet of riverine vessels in the world with more than a hundred different types of wooden boats.

Yet, as the wooden sailboats were pushed into extinction by motorised, steel-bodied vessels, their extraordinary craft was disappearing into irrelevance.

Friendship supports these master carpenters by commissioning scale replicas built using the same techniques as the full-sized boats; which act as a way to document and preserve the numerous designs from all over Bangladesh. As a result, these carpenters continue to make a living.

Moreover they have travelled around the world to exhibit their craft, and enjoy a status as the last remaining artisans of their craft.

Friendship ensures door-to-door services like physiotherapy, counselling and routine follow-ups to households with persons that have disabilities.

It raises awareness through community sensitisation and youth groups to make the public more empathetic towards and inclusive of persons with disabilities. It also informs persons with disabilities of their rights, and connects them to vital services.

Friendship also helps increase accessibility to local government assistance, including helping beneficiaries obtain disability ID cards, disability allowances, assistive devices such as canes, walkers, hearing-aids, wheelchairs and braille pads, and treatment from public hospitals.