After almost a year and a half of lockdown and school closures, children in Bangladesh have been back at school since mid-September 2021. The schoolchildren and teachers are delighted. At last, lessons can take place in person again and the long months of online teaching are over for the time being.
It was a challenging time for the teachers at our slum schools. They recorded their lessons every day to make them available online. In the afternoons, home visits were usually made to the children to ensure that everything was understood as well as possible.
Needless to say, the children suffered enormously during the year and a half of school closure. If the lockdown was already bad here in Austria, it is unimaginable how the whole thing must have felt in a tiny slum hut. Following the online lessons was also a major challenge for many. The home visits helped enormously to close knowledge gaps.
The children did not have to go without the food they normally get at school. Since the start of the pandemic, Austrian Doctors has distributed countless emergency aid packages worth almost € 100,000 in Bangladesh.
In mid-September 2021, there was great joy when the schools in the slum areas of Dhaka finally opened their doors again. We hope that they will now remain open.
