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Rekha Begum feels proud to have been elected as ECCD School Management Committee Chair
Rekha Begum thinks she's 40 but is not really sure. Anyway, her age is the least of her worries - she is more concerned about where her next meal will come from, whether her home will survive the coming floods or how she and her community will save the local pre-school and bring about lasting and beneficial change.
Rekha and her family live in one of the most isolated and impoverished areas of Bangladesh -the mid-char region - in the village of Dalilkandi, Bogra District. They have been participants of CARE Bangladesh's SHOUHARDO program, supported by local Partner Organisation Gram Bikash Sangstha (GBS), since 2007. Rekha's household was identified as extreme poor, along with 228 others in Dalilkandi, and she has been taking a passionate and pro-active role in her community ever since.
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In the business of changing lives, one life touched is a spark of hope ignited in a hundred others. On February 22nd 2009, at a typical CARE Day in the Kishoregang Regional Office came 18 year old Sohana Islam from Baniachang Upazila under the Habiganj District. A beneficiary of the SHOUHARDO EDU collaboration program, she took time to narrate how CARE's interventions proved instrumental in changing her life from one of struggle and strife to one of freedom and socioeconomic prowess. The following, is her story.
Initially, when Sohana's father was a dry fish trader, her family was passing days in subsistence. In a family of six, her mother was a housewife, her elder sister was married, her younger brothers and she were in school.
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Learning through playing at ECCD
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ECCD monthly parenting sessions have also contributed to these changes. Parents learn about the developmental stages of children and the importance of being involved in their kid's education. Many mothers have also gained literacy skills through SHOUHARDO's EKATA intervention, and so feel more motivated themselves to be involved in and understand the education process. Rekha also says that since SHOUHARDO, issues such as violence against women, early marriage and polygamy are spoken about openly in the community and are no longer accepted. Having married as a very young age herself, Rekha knows the importance of these shifts in attitude. "You can feel the change" Rekha explains, "mothers communicate better now – with their husbands, their children and each other".
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