Continuing Education in Disaster-Affected Schools in Bangladesh

This field report describes the Education in Emergencies (EiE) pilot project. EiE was implemented in 1,000 primary schools in ten districts in Bangladesh and designed to address the fact that project schools had been unable to continue providing education during previous natural disasters. Through the EiE project, however, school stakeholders participated in trainings and workshops, developed participatory contingency plans, and implemented various preparedness activities. Of the activities implemented, the selection of alternative learning places was found to be the most important because it enabled the disaster-affected schools to continue schooling when the school buildings were not usable. As a result of EiE implementation, schools were not closed for a single day in 2010. The pilot project has also benefited non-project schools as they have begun voluntarily adopting the project’s strategy to cope with disaster. The results of EiE show that simple interventions (e.g., capacity building and contingency planning) can enable disaster-affected schools to continue providing education during and after emergencies.