Project Alok: Helping children overcome both poverty and learning disorders 

In the poverty-stricken areas of Bangladesh, survival often comes at the cost of childhood as labour replaces care, lullabies, education and play. 

Md Adnan Hossain, founder and executive director of It's Humanity Foundation (IHF), was exposed to this reality when he began working with students in Kurigram in 2010.

"I had never really had the opportunity to go inside someone's home and experience children's struggles with poverty firsthand," Adnan said.

Watching children roaming around without even the thought of education in their minds made Adnan question their mothers.

"If we send them to school, what will we do? We need money. We can't really work ourselves. Our husbands work — some drive rickshaws, some sell vegetables — but since that's not enough, we make our children work."

Adnan's follow-up question was, "How much do your children earn from those jobs?"

The reply, "Tk80 a week."

This choice to pursue a less-than-a-dollar weekly wage in place of education came as a shock to Adnan. 

"We can manage with that money. The money our children bring home helps us buy groceries and other necessities," the mothers assured Adnan.

"I heard several stories like that. I asked where the children worked. One child worked at a bicycle shop, pumping air into bicycle tyres. Another worked at a tea stall," Adnan recalled.

In order to address this situation, It's Humanity Foundation started its education programme in June 2010 with 17 children in Syedpur, Nilphamari. Today, IHF has 13 schools across the country with 1,552  students.

"Their parents might lock them inside the house and leave for work, saying, 'You stay here and play,' while leaving some food nearby. So, these children essentially did not have a balanced life. Because of this, things such as attention disorders or dyslexia-like learning difficulties developed over time."  Md Adnan Hossain, founder and executive director, IHF

When dropping out is mistaken for disobedience 

When education for these poor communities is already a far cry, who thinks about the extra care children with special needs require?

Neither do the parents want to be aware of the situation, nor does anyone think it's necessary. If the student is inattentive, dropping out of school is the only solution.

When Adnan and his team started the project in Cherag Ali, Gazipur, they noticed a frequently occurring problem. 

Students would often stop coming  to school or were no longer studying.

Most of the parents of these children were garment workers or daily wage labourers. 

At Alok School, children learn through storytelling, games, puzzles and hands-on activities. 

When the team held a meeting with the parents, their replies were generic: "I don't know, the child has become indisciplined," or "We have put the child in a madrasa," or "We consulted with a hujur, and he said that the child should be sent to a madrasa because perhaps a jinn or something had possessed the child."

As the team discussed among themselves, someone brought up a reference from the movie 'Taare Zameen Par', where the child protagonist had dyslexia.

"We wondered whether something similar could be happening with some of our students," said Adnan.

The team then started tracking the students' records, which led them to discover several important factors behind attention disorders among the children.

First, many of the mothers did not receive proper nutrition during pregnancy. 

Second, many of these children started school quite late, thus not receiving education at the appropriate stage of brain development.

Third, when children from more privileged backgrounds are very young, they are often introduced to the alphabets, numbers, or nursery rhymes before enrolling in school. But children from lower income households do not get such opportunities.

Another factor was that many of these children were growing up amid a lot of conflict at home. 

"Their parents might lock them inside the house and leave for work, saying, 'You stay here and play,' while leaving some food nearby. So, these children essentially did not have a balanced life. Because of this, things such as attention disorders or dyslexia-like learning difficulties developed over time," Adnan said.

When the students came to the classroom, they could not keep up or interact with the other children. This would lead to frustration among both the teacher and the child.

If the teacher scolded the child, the child would often stop coming to school from the next day.

And when the children stopped studying at home or attending school, the parents often thought that sending them to a madrasa would solve the problem.

A problem hiding in plain sight 

IHF decided to reach out to a child psychologist.

A proper clinical assessment would require several permissions and procedures, but a non-clinical assessment could still help identify struggling children.

In the first phase, they identified around 35 children who appeared to have some form of difficulty. Some showed signs of attention-related challenges, while others appeared to have learning difficulties.

"We were not paying enough attention to it, even though it was happening right in front of our eyes," Adnan recalled.

The school's first response was to speak to five parents. But the conversations quickly exposed another barrier: language.

When the school explained its findings, some parents' reaction was defensive, "Are you calling my child crazy? My child isn't crazy. There's nothing wrong with my child's brain. My child is perfectly fine," they told him.

"That's when we realised that we had used the wrong language," Adnan said. 

The school then began looking for a more supportive approach to keep the children within the same school while giving them additional attention through a separate classroom environment.

Project Alok takes shape 

Two counselors agreed to work with the school on a pro bono basis and train its teachers. The goal was to redesign the delivery but for the National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) curriculum. 

"We did not want to completely change what the children were supposed to learn academically. Instead, we wanted to change the way the curriculum was delivered," Adnan explained.

The counselors introduced teachers to classroom strategies tailored to children's individual needs, even down to how colours could affect attention and overstimulation. 

The project gained a major boost when Daraz Bangladesh became its first corporate partner. With its support, the school established a separate campus, redesigned classrooms, arranged specialised teacher training and developed tailored courses.

"And that is basically how Project Alok officially kicked off in 2018," Adnan said. Since then, the programme has continued to identify children who need additional support, with 96 students currently enrolled.

The children enrolled in Project Alok still have to sit for the same national examinations as other students. 

According to Adnan, the approach has produced a success rate of around 80%. Children generally receive the additional support for about a year before returning to a mainstream school environment. "If we can bring about a 70–80% improvement, the children are usually able to continue developing the remaining skills while studying alongside other children," he said.

The school also follows up with students after they leave the programme. But Adnan says the larger challenge is taking the model beyond a single campus.

And rather than establishing separate centres everywhere, the team has trained teachers from 15 schools to identify learning difficulties and determine appropriate support. Training sessions are held roughly every 45 days, allowing teachers to discuss challenges and develop solutions together.

Beyond the classroom 

Children learn through storytelling, games, puzzles and hands-on activities. 

For moral and ethical lessons, teachers use cartoons and movies before connecting what children have seen to concepts in their textbooks. The approach is designed to make lessons memorable, particularly for children who struggle with attention and remembering information.

Teachers repeatedly refer back to previous activities, helping children build connections between new lessons and things they already remember.

Beyond the classrooms, students receive digital learning opportunities, health campaigns and nutritious meals.

Measuring progress without making children feel different 

"They grow up in the same way that a typical child grows up," Adnan said. "The only difference is in the way they learn things."

Project Alo has a system to track whether its approach is actually helping them.

Adnan said counselors are closely involved in the evaluation process. They assess the children during examinations, visit them periodically and speak with them about their experiences and progress. But the process is deliberately informal.

"The evaluation is designed in such a way that the children do not feel as though they are being evaluated because they have a clinical disorder," he explained. Instead, counselors use casual conversations and interactions to understand how the children are developing and what they are learning.

The school also monitors academic progress more frequently. While students generally undergo three assessments a year, children enrolled in Project Alok are assessed six times.

"This allows us to understand how much progress they are making," Adnan said.