Big First Steps for Smallfoot

Photo: Moyukh Mahtab

Kashem peers out from behind his mother's figure at the doorway of the barely furnished quarter of the Mirpur-1 slum. The remnants of a fire which broke out in the slum in February are everywhere - piles of burned paper pave the alleys here. Hundreds of families lost what little they had according to newspaper reports. But Kashem's loss is more personal. His mother, who seems to have recouped from the shock,says, “The first thing he asked me was if this meant he could not go to school the next day. His uniform and books were burnt.”
Gulshan Jubaed Prince grew up in Mirpur as a child. He takes me on a tour through the garbage infested murky roads of the slum. Just beyond is Time International Academy, the final destination - 12 children from the slum, including Kashem, are students in the English medium school thanks to Prince's initiative - Smallfoot. Whatever Smallfoot did for these kids seems to be working despite their physical hardships, everyday privations and most of all, the social stigma of being a slum kid among middleclass families.
Prince, a student of Computer Science and Engineering in Brac University, after coming back from the US from the Youth Exchange Program (YES) wanted to give back to the community. Initially, Prince and a few others wanted to work for a school for the underprivileged and were told to collect thousand taka donations as a start.
“It was difficult to get people to pay up that much,” says Prince. It would be far more feasible to collect hundred taka from each. A subsequent visit to the school put them in a further dilemma. Prince and his friends were not happy with the way the children were being treated. These schools had the funds but were not providing the facilities such as desks and chairs which other school children take for granted. What bothered him most was the bleak future that lay ahead for these kids. Without formal recognition, the education they were receiving would not be of much use to these children. At best they could get enrolled into a polytechnic school.What they needed was a proper incorporation into a system.

Smallfoot kids with founder Gulshan Jubaed Prince (L) and Monjurul Asif (R). Photo: Moyukh Mahtab

Prince started Smallfoot a year ago. Its main objective – to give these children a good education.With its handful of volunteers and 12 kids from the Mirpur slum, Smallfootinitially started its own school. “The parents were distrustful at first, they still are to an extent,”says Prince. They were afraid that the school would close down midway.
One year on, Smallfoot seems to be making big progress. It started as a small school of 12 kids taught by volunteer teachers to get them interested in education. Now Time International,an English medium school, has willingly admitted these kids when most good schools were reluctant to take them because of their background.
Iftekhar Ahmed, the Vice Principal of Time International speaks enthusiastically of the reception the children got when they started. “From the beginning, the other kids from better backgrounds had no problems accepting these kids. The guardians on the other hand were worried; they raised issues about the environment and their attire.” But he insisted that the proper environment would be maintained.
The guardians, though late, became accepting of 12 slum children going to class with their children. According to the teachers, these 12 children are doing quite well adapting to the environment and their performance is on a par with the other students.
This is exactly what Smallfoot aimed for when they started the project. With no plans of taking on more kids, all they wanted to do was take these dozen and bear the responsibility of giving them a good education till they are in a position to support themselves. Prince says his hope is to raise awareness of the fact that good quality education should not be a privilege for under-privileged kids.He points out that if one school is willing to take these kids, then more initiatives by other people can help diffuse the extent of education to more of them. “If we each take a handful, personally guarantee to the schools that all their standards will be maintained, then underprivileged kids would not have to go to underprivileged schools.”
On the school's part, generosity and understanding was crucial to the venture. So, it was a relief to Smallfoot when Time International decided to bear 70 percent of the admission costs for these kids and 50 percent of the monthly tuition. The rest comes from hundred taka donations, which volunteers from Smallfoot collect monthly. So far, this has been enough to bear the cost for the house rent of the initial school and their books, bags and school dresses.
Back in the slum Maenuddin, the father of Dina who is the brightest of the twelve, tells me how he wants his girl to live a better life. A vegetable tradesman, Maenuddin adds, “I even hired a private tutor for Dina and I want her to pursue a profession that she wants.”
Dina wants to grow up to be a doctor. Only Dina among the twelve had attended a school before Smallfoot, but she left because she didn't enjoy studying and the teachers were irregular. Now, after a year in Smallfoot, she is performing the best in the new school and her teachers are happy.
Tania, another girl from Smallfoot, says she wants to join the police when she grows up. She flares up as someone from the group chimes in saying, “Women can't be police.” And soon all the kids are talking about their aspirations, about the number of friends they have in the new school, what they study – in short showing the same interest in their school as every kid does in a normal environment.

The Smallfoot kids with the other school children at Time International. Photo: Moyukh Mahtab

The Vice-Principal talks of how these kids all attend the classes regularly, adding that since the fire, a few have been absent. Their uniforms were all gone along with the books. “Time International decided to pay for all the books, bags and stationery,” he says. Smallfoot took on the cost of making new clothes. Kashem and the other unfortunate are excited again at the prospect of re-joining the classes within a week's time.
What Smallfoot has achieved with little funding is novel in Bangladesh. Their sentiment - that every kid, no matter the background deserves a good education spurred these university students to take on the mammoth task of responsibility for twelve children.
Prince adds that eighty percent of the funds for Smallfoot was managed by students from schools such as St. Joseph, Notre Dame, ISD etc. Seeing their initiative, Oxford even agreed to take two of these children without any admission fee when the time came.
Smallfoot's big plans are far from over. Even though they don't plan to take on more kids, they feel that it is their responsibility to ensure these twelve are never in want of money for education. They fear that eventually, classmates will taunt these kids for their background, and some will want to drop out midway. Optimistic, Prince tells me, “We will deal with peer pressure case by case.”
In spite of future difficulties that are bound to arise, it is cheerful to see that at least one initiative in Bangladesh saw these kids as more than underprivileged, with just as much a right to education - proper education - as anybody else.