Education Champion Network
Malala Fund
Duration: 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2025
Total Budget: 2, 03, 56,291

Malala Fund is working for a world where every girl can learn and lead. With more than 130 million girls out of school today, we are working to break down barriers that hold girls back. The Education Champion Network harnesses the collective power of local activists to advance progress towards girls’ secondary education around the world. The network currently has chapters in Afghanistan, Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Lebanon, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkey, Bangladesh and Tanzania.

CAMPE is motivated by the action taken by Malala Yousafzai for her heroic intervene that contributed to become hon’ble Nobel laureate. CAMPE would like to learn from her insights and enshrine girls in Bangladesh to raise their voice and empower as a human being and reduce the gender based discriminations and violence through education. The Education Champion Network aims to contribute to “Empower girls through influence national policy and practice change discourse for gender-responsive, climate resilience, and digitally-oriented secondary education in Bangladesh”. The major outcome of the project would demonstrate enhanced equitable access to safe, quality education for girls and boys during and the post-pandemic situation in 32 schools in Bangladesh. It is expected that these schools will have an integrated system for disaster response mechanisms that enhance the resilience among boys and girls at the secondary level. They will also demonstrate reducing the digital divide between boys and girls through increased use of teaching-learning process including the co-curriculum activities.

The project will demonstrate and contribute to influence the policymakers to adopted innovative approach to reduce the inequality: 32 secondary schools will be directly benefited from the interventions that will demonstrate increased access to girls and retain them in the secondary level education institutions.

The primary target group of the advocacy initiative for influencing policy is to influence the Ministry of Education, particularly the Secondary and Higher Education Division (SHED) and Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education (DSHE). Once they are convinced, the next level is to convince the Ministry of Planning and Ministry of Finance. At the sub-national level to influence the practice to influence the behaviour of the District and sub-district level Education officers, Head Teachers and School Management Committee. In some cases there taboo among the parents that ICT devise may lead to derail the adolescents - that will also be addressed through co-curriculum activities. The first set of interventions will demonstrate how community could be one of the most influential factors for bring back to school, particularly for the girls are at risk of being dropouts or already dropped.

The project interventions will contribute to enhanced equitable access to safe, quality education for girls and boys during the post-pandemic situation in 24 schools in Dhaka, Habiganj, Norsingdi, Gaibandha, Kurigram, Khulna, Patuakhali districts in Bangladesh.

Dr. Manzoor Ahmed, Professor Emeritus of BRAC University, Senior Adviser at the BRAC University Institute of Educational Development (BIED), and Vice-Chairperson of CAMPE is nominated the Education Champion Network for the Project.