Growing Our First School in Bangladesh!
Written by Hannah Jobe
We were blessed to be able to open our first school in Bangladesh in 2021. Our school is located In northwest Bangladesh in a village in the middle of a large rural farming community.
In this area, children as young as ten work in the fields with their parents to help support their families. Because of their economic difficulties, many parents are unable to send their children to school or even provide them with adequate nutrition, so our project facilitator wanted to start both a feeding program and a school for them. Prayerfully, we decided to go for it!
We were able to build a small one-room school where students from kindergarten through second grade learn subjects like Bangla (language arts), Math, English, and Science. The students also take part in a Bible class where they are learning songs and stories from scripture.
Each day at 1pm, around 120 kids come to the school to learn and to eat. Since adequate nutrition is not always available for the kids at home, they are really thankful for the healthy meals they are served each day.
The cooks and teachers work hard to make sure all the kids get enough to eat. Check out the size of that pot!
We had the opportunity to meet the students during our visit to Bangladesh in December. The kids were happy, healthy, and eager to learn.
When we interviewed a few of the students, they agreed that their favorite subjects were Bangla and Bible, and that the hardest subject was English. Learning a foreign language is not easy!
One young girl, eleven-year-old Rajoshree, shared a testimony with us. A couple of months before, she was riding her bicycle home from school, when she fell and broke her left arm. She prayed to God to heal her arm quickly, and He did! She is very thankful to God for answering her prayers.
While the village where our school is located has some Christians, the majority of people living in this area come from Hindu backgrounds. At the school they have the opportunity to learn about Jesus and His love for them. One of the biggest blessings from visiting the school was hearing their loud, cheerful voices lifting up in songs to Jesus.
After we returned to the U.S., the families of 45+ children showed interest in sending their kids to our school, including some Muslim families. Since our small school building is already full, we are planning to add morning classes to create more space. For the new students who are coming, we are planning to hire new teachers and staff, so we can add third, fourth, and fifth grades. We also need to build interior walls in the school building to help reduce noise pollution for classes happening simultaneously.
We also need to fill in the small pond on the school property to add much-needed additional bathrooms for the students and to expand the play area.
This is the line for the bathroom after the students are let out for breaks.
We were blessed to see how God is working in this little Bangladeshi school, and we would like to invite you to pray with us for these new expansion projects. But we especially request your prayers for the teachers, the students, and their families. We have seen in our evening schools India, how God is transforming children’s lives and is using them to reach their families. We pray the same will happen in Bangladesh.
Education is a powerful tool for the Gospel in countries like Bangladesh, and we have been given the opportunity to open more schools in other parts of the country. We will share more details in the future, but we invite you join us in praying as we seek to turn these opportunities into realities.
If God is leading you to support this project financially, please click the button below. Here are some more details about costs for expanding the school: To fill in the pond, build two new toilets, and build three interior walls will cost about $4,600. Uniforms, plates and cups for the new students will cost $900 ($20 per student). The cost for the new teachers and staff is $575 per month