The attendance of students at Charbhita Primary School at Haripur under Thakurgaon, one of the poverty stricken upazila in the country, has doubled in less than two years after launching midday programme in July, 2014.
Sources said Irfan Ali, the school’s principal, established the school on his own village land in 2001, with 50 students in a bamboo fence room.
Since its beginning, the students of the school have always passed with flying colours maintaining a zero fail rate.
Currently, the school is run by four dedicated teachers who work in return of no salary.
But due to persisting poverty in the village, parents of the students would rather send their children off to work to earn some money instead of going to school for study.
Irfan planned of providing free meals at his school and started the initiative in July, 2014 with his own funds.
This is the only school in the entire Rangpur division to distribute free meals among students.
But he found it extremely difficult to maintain things on his own.
Irfan said: “I wanted to keep up the free meals scheme at my school to attract students at the primary education level and prevent them from dropping out early.”
“Currently, 176 students are studying at the school from Class 1 to 5. Every month, around Tk33,000 is needed to feed the students, which is quite a large budget for a remote village like Charbhita,” continued Irfan.
To ensure funds for the school’s free meal programme, Irfan later started his own poultry farm and papaya garden.
And the families in the community donate a handful amount of rice to the school every week.
Speaking about the school’s free meals menu, Irfan said, “Bread, bananas and eggs from my farm are served to the students for 3 days a week. For the remaining 3 days of the week, they are given healthy porridge with egg.”
He added the free meal scheme has helped improve attendance rates among students at the school.
At present, around 90 percent of students attend their classes regularly which is a significant improvement from less than 50 percent class attendance in the past.
Fatima, a student of the school said: “Earlier, it was hard to concentrate in class with a hungry stomach. But now the school gives us food and we are happy to go there to study.”
Another student Russel said:“We can study at school without any tension of hunger”.
Local UP chairman Abu Taher said: “This is the first school in the region to provide free meals to students and we want the meals to continue.”
Md Abu Hares, primary education officer of the district said: “When the whole community supports an initiative, it will surely gain success.”
Deputy Commissioner Mukesh Chandra Bishwas said:“We will use Charbhita Primary School’s free meals model to introduce similar programs in other schools of all upazilas in the district.”
He has donated corrugated sheets with which a new school room has been built for accommodating students.
Primary and Mass Education Minister Mostafizur Rahman have also paid a visit to the school and donated Tk2 lakh to build new infrastructure for the school very soon.
Haripur has an average literacy rate of 19.5 percent (7+ years) and the national average of 32.4 percent literate.
