This week we welcomed G.E.M. Munro from the Amarok Society which we support along with several other local Rotary clubs (Mayfield, Urban Spirits, Whyte Avenue, Grande Prairie and Hinton). He spoke to us about their ‘Teach a Mother, Change the World’ school program in Bangladesh. This program teaches mothers in the slums of Bangladesh to become teachers, so that they in turn can go home and teach their children and their neighbour’s children (both boys and girls) everything they have learned. It then gives many of these children an opportunity they would otherwise have no opportunity to do. He used the example of one young boy named Shabo, of about ten, who spends every day working in a tea shop earning a living, who attends a mother’s school program after work. This child (and many others like him) should really be in school during the day but his family is so poor, he must work to help support them.
The Amarok program empowers these mothers, children and their families by giving them the gift of an education. It then in turn helps to lift them out of poverty by giving them skills that will help them get better paying jobs. It also gives them a wider window on the world at large. This makes it less likely that they will become radicalized as they learn to make their own judgements and think for themselves. It is well known that uneducated children are easily radicalized. Schooling gives them critical thinking skills as well as the practical skills needed to be productive citizens. We would like to thank Gem for his short informative update on this Amarok Society program.