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| Students are eager to learn on the Shidhulai floating boat
school. |
Growing up in a small village in Bangladesh, Mohammed Rezwan would get
frustrated when schools closed during the rainy season, sometimes staying closed
for months at a time. In recent years, the effects of global warming have caused
unusually heavy rains, and melting glaciers in the Himalayas have caused sea
levels to rise, flooding farmland, threatening the livelihood of local residents
– and the education of their children.
Now an architect, Rezwan returned home and set to work in a different career
– designing traditional flat-bottom river boats to operate as floating schools.
A 2009 Tech Award laureate and executive director of the nonprofit Shidhulai
Swanirvar Sangstha, Rezwan has pioneered the use of solar-powered "boat
schools," as well as floating libraries, health clinics, training centers and
gardens in flood-prone areas of Bangladesh.
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| Each classroom houses up to 90
children. | "Life becomes difficult during the monsoon
season," Rezwan said. "It’s hard to move from one place to another. So I thought
if the children cannot go to school, why don’t we bring the school to them?"
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| On a library boat, a student takes her book outside to read. |
--------------- Next year, Rezwan is thinking of adding a wooden platform to his floating
gardens to provide more shelter to people during the rainy season. "We have to
do what we can to help the Bangladesh people adapt to the climate change
situation," he said. "We don’t have many resources, and our people don’t have
anywhere to go. If we want to live here, we have to learn to live on the water."
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