By Nasima, Morion, Shahnur, Shamima and (Aysha the schoolteacher)
Dear Dryden, Rotarians, we are really pleased to share with you about our days and progress. After a long hardship of livelihood because of Covid crisis our days started to begin with our family and works.
We should mention that during the Covid lockdown we received food support twice by the Rotary Club of Shaikat, Cox’s Bazar and twice by Amarok office. Other hand, mothers of our school extended hand for each other, shared food with the hungry families, short-term personal loans and support to keep us alive. We proved that we are united and one of another.
But recently the Covid situation is getting worst day by day. It seems to be we are going back to the pandemic and crisis of livelihood as the Covid infection and deaths are increasing in last 2 weeks significantly. We do not know what will happen next but certainly will capitalize the experience we had in last year.
We hope all the members of your club are well there.
Our learning progress has been improved better than before. Not only our learning but our lives have been changed in many ways as we know how to be 
happy in limited earnings and helping others who are in needs.
happy in limited earnings and helping others who are in needs.In our school we learn lot of things through fun, games, activities and role-play. Before taking any class our teacher always starts with an introduction which relates with the subject to make the session more relevant, interactive and take us into the topic.
Drama and role-play are also interesting way to provide messages rather giving lecture method. We also share learning with our neighbors to make them aware and include them with us for development of our community.
We have some good news to share with you, we have got new books from our school. We are so happy to receive those books. Interestingly in the books some of the stories written by the mothers of Amarok Schools and photos drawn by the children of our micro-school and by some graduate children. We are so happy to receive those books.
On March 26, our teacher arranged a discussion session in school on our ‘Independence Day’, all mothers and children participated there. Nasima, Moriom and Sahana played the leadership role. Moriom provided a long speech about our liberation war and the happenings during the war. Some mothers also provided short speeches and children of our micro-schools like Shazad, Shamim and Koli performed songs on patriotism. We enjoyed the event and arrange such event to make our community connected with our school.
Now we are sharing a story of our school that how the mothers of our school feel for each other and stands for another.
Srity’s Story
“Srity” is a mother of our school, her husband is a day laborer. Srity became pregnant and was suffering in some difficulty. We often visited her houses and looked after her health. In February suddenly at night she became very sick at her pregnancy of 8 months. Srity’s husband came to Hasina who is our friend in school for help. Hasina informed Josna & Amena and three of them took her to the nearest hospital and admitted there.
After admission doctors asked for blood as Srity became very weak. Our friends informed us, we managed a blood donor from our slum for her and Nasima one of our friends with help of her husband reached to the hospital with the blood-donor at mid-night.Srity had to stay in hospital for 5 days. The hospital provided her all treatment but we had to buy required medicines. We provided food to Srity for all 5 days from our home by rotation. We had nothing to do because her day-laborer husband could not work for the days.
This was a sad news that Srity recovered but the baby delivered as dead. They had no money to pay for the medicine and other related cost, we gave some from our ability but during the discharge time to pay the hospital-bill one of friend ‘Almas’ put mortgage of her only gold ear-rings. Now Srity’s husband is working hard to pay back the loan that Almas can get back her gold ear-rings. This is how we help each other and feel ourselves as the member of a bigger family.
Josna’s Story
One of the mothers of our school is ‘Josna’, she was married at her age of 14 and became a mother at 16 years of age. Now she is 18 with a baby about 2 years of old.
Her husband already divorced her, and has gone away from the slum. We have heard, he lives in Dhaka and married again with another teen girl.When Josna’s husband flew away all of a sudden, leaving her with a kid she felt in deep trouble but we managed work for her as maid.
Now she works as a part-time maid in 4 houses, studies in our Mother School and teaches 5 little children. Amena our friend is teaching her tailoring works that she could leave the maid job for an independent earning and achieve a sustainable technical-skill.
Josna is happy now without the stupid husband and wants to educate her child for a better future.
On Dealing with the Issue of Early Marriage
We have such many stories to overcome the challenges of lives and following the experience and impact of our life we work in our slum and around the slums that nobody marries off the daughters in early age. Rubi is another mother life-example of bad impact of the early marriage. Josna, Rubi, Srity talk in the community, and share the story of their lives and motivates the parents that they do not think of the early marriage of their daughters and such way we are successful to stop the early marriage from our community.
Lots of love to you all,
Nasima, Morion, Shahnur, Shamima and (Aysha the schoolteacher)
(Mothers of Durbar-Shaikat Rotary Mothers’ School, Cox’sbazar, Bangladesh)