Advocacy Goals
Overall Advocacy Goal:
To support the education and reenrollment of adolescent girls, especially married or pregnant girls, in the Bangladesh national school system as schools reopen following COVID-19-related closures. Knowledge of successful mitigation strategies from the 2014 Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone will be used to guide this support.Specifically, goals include:
1. Securing permission and funding to expand the International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) tablet-based learning strategy to students outside of the Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar
2. Advocating for the timely reorganization of the FSSAP and SEDP programs to focus specifically on addressing gender-specific fallout from COVID-19 by increasing the provision of stipends and financial incentives for female students
Goal #1
Goal: Secure permission and funding to expand the IRC’s tablet-based learning strategy to students outside of the Rohingya refugees in Cox’s BazarContext: In November 2019, the IRC launched a pilot program called Pop-Up Learning to improve access to education within Cox’s Bazar, a district in Bangladesh home to a high concentration of Rohingya refugees. The program distributed low cost, internet-independent tablets running interactive curriculums that focused on fostering emotional support, literacy, and numeracy. The program allowed students to control their learning and empowered community caregivers to supervise. At the end of four months the program was successful at improving baseline reading and math skills. Though not targeted specifically at girls, Pop-Up Learning’s provision of free, high quality digital learning materials in local languages allowed marginalized girls to access an education (IRC 2020).
Recommendation: Expand the Pop-Up Learning initiative to Bangladeshi communities outside of Cox’s Bazar, targeting low income and rural communities least likely to have access to the internet and other technology. Continue to train female community members as program facilitators, and target specifically pregnant and disabled girls in sign up and advertising campaigns. Continue the four month curriculum plan as a way for students to return to learning and transition back to in-person schooling as schools reopen (IRC 2020).
Goal #2
Goal: Advocate for the timely reorganization of the FSSAP and SEDP programs to focus specifically on addressing gender-specific fallout from COVID-19 by increasing the provision of stipends and financial incentives for female studentsContext: In recent years, after achieving gender parity in secondary schools through the efforts of FSSAP programs, the government of Bangladesh shifted its focus from the provision of stipends to girls living in rural areas through the FSSAP to programs focused on increasing retention and completion rates in secondary schools like the SEDP. COVID-19 has introduced major gender-specific fallout in the education system, however, since girls have limited access to distance learning technology and face gender disparity in household resource allocation. Redesigning and refocusing the efforts of the FSSAP program to ensure its sustained benefits during and after COVID-19 helps address the attrition of girls, especially those in rural communities (Rahman Khandker et al., 2021).
Recommendation: Refocus and expand resources allocated to the FSSAP program, building additional financial incentives into COVID-19 recovery packages to prevent female dropouts. The government should assume that COVID-19 will have severely impacted gender disparity in school enrollment, and should prepare to implement the FSSAP program in conditions similar to when the program was first initiated in 1994. Continue to focus incentive provision on the most marginalized girls: girls in rural communities, pregnant girls, and adolescent moms (Rahman Khandker et al., 2021).