Kids helping kids

By Melissa Grant
EACH year students at Beaconhills College put their best feet forward for Bangladesh – a tradition dating back to 1994 when the staff and students began raising $5000 to establish a school on Bhola Island.
The college’s first sponsored Bangladeshi school at Hussrajong was built in little over two weeks in 1995, as part of the Co-Operation in Development project (CO-ID). It was one of several Melbourne schools to commit financially to help establish new primary schools in the poverty-stricken nation.
Pictures showing the construction of the Bangladeshi school appeared in the Gazette that August, with village children shown beside the frame eagerly awaiting the building’s completion.
Fast forward 14 years and Beaconhills College has another Bangladesh school in Morhab, and raises $5000 each year to cover the costs of its teachers’ salaries and the students’ stationery.
Beaconhills historian John Waterhouse, who was involved with the project all those years ago, said the Hussrajong school was still going strong.
“Somehow it leads to economic development to the point that they can take over the school,” he said.
“The community took over running it after five years.”
Beaconhills got involved with CO-ID after its founder, Fred Hyde, and some of his co-workers inspired staff and students when they visited the college.
The school community decided to get behind the organisation, raising $5000 by mid-1995 so that construction on the school building could begin.
Mr Waterhouse and a committee of students started a number of fund-raising activities. An out of uniform day, a walkathon and a Bengali lunch raised $2000.
A highlight of the first Bangladesh Week for Year 7 students was the walkathon up Toomuc Valley to its community hall. The walk not only helped raise $1000, but also gave students the chance to reflect on the basic needs and education conditions in Bangladesh.
The school opened on 8 May, 1995 with 300 enrolled students.
Today, the Hussrajong school is self-sufficient, but Beaconhills still raises money for the Morhab school through its annual Run for Bangladesh, held in conjunction with the college’s house cross-country carnival each year.
However, those involved with the CO-ID project including those at Beaconhills, never dreamt that one day the Bangladeshi school children would reciprocate such fund-raising efforts – which they did when they donated $800 to the Victorian Bushfire Appeal in May.
Mr Hyde, now 89, discouraged the students from doing so as the 10 cents, which they effectively each donated, meant that they would have to forego their meals for a day.
But the 10,000-odd students at the 41 CO-ED schools were adamant that the Australian children, whom they had heard had lost their schools in the bushfires, needed to get back in the classroom as soon as possible.
“They, being well aware that much of the taka (money) that built their schools, bought their books, paid their teachers, and helped them if they were sick or hungry in fact came from students of Australian schools, decided to help their fellow students across the sea,” Mr Hyde said.
“In the matter of less than a week, they subscribed 39,810 taka. That may not be much in Australian dollars, but considering most of it came in coins of far less than a cent in value, it shows the magnitude of the gratitude they have for the education that has been given to them.”
Bangladesh is one of the world’s poorest countries – about 36 per cent of the population lives on less than $1 a day and millions of its children are malnourished, according to UNICEF.
Mr Waterhouse would like one day to see the Bangladeshi schools in action, but says it doesn’t make economic sense.
“It would cost me as much to go there as to build a school,” he said.