To establish a fun and alternative educational system in Bangladesh that helps the marginalized communities to come up with innovative solutions for their respective communities, Green Ink, a media and communication agency of Bangladesh is collaborating with the Project Defy from Bengaluru, India.
Due to the pandemic, while the children of the country were falling behind as educational institutions were shuttered, the two organizations took immediate action to introduce a self-designed learning method in Bangladesh, according to a press release issued on Sunday.
Self-designed learning is an alternative approach to learning and education in which the learners determine their own learning objectives and design their own methods to achieve those objectives while seeking information and knowledge in the most effective way that suits them.
The two organizations from different nations began their collaborative journey in the year 2021 when the Covid-19 pandemic was at its pinnacle in Bangladesh by establishing Nook, a self-designed learning centre in the city of Barisal.
A Nook is a physical space, usually about 500-1000 square feet in size which is provisioned with laptops, the internet, tools, and materials for making projects. It is a creative space that enables the community and its individuals to explore, experiment, and build projects, in order to achieve personal and community-wide learning objectives.
On this occasion Green Ink CEO Ehsan Kabir said: “We hope to continue our journey of self-designed learning for marginalized communities in Bangladesh through lucrative partnerships.”
Abhijit Sinha, CEO-Project DEFY, said: "We are ecstatic to turn our initial experiments of bringing the Nook to Barisal into now a full-fledged partnership with Green Ink. We collectively aim to bring our self-designed learning model at scale to the whole country and create an education revolution that will inspire the world."
By strengthening partnerships between Green Ink and Project Defy, the organizations aim to develop at least 10 more self-designed learning centres like “Barisal Nook” in all parts of Bangladesh in the next few years.