DHAKA: With a view to helping out hapless children in the country’s disaster-prone areas, two non-government organsisations initiated a scheme for providing them with education and mental supports.  

Under a combined project, Plan Bangladesh and South Asian Partnership (SAP)-Bangladesh will provide education and mental support to 18,000 children and 60,000 mothers in the cyclone-hit areas in Sadar upazila of the backwater southern Barguna district.

State Minister for Women and Children Affairs Dr. Shirin Sharmin Choudury inaugurated the project styled Early Childhood Care and Development in Disaster-prone Areas at the LGED Bhaban Sunday.

Edward Thomas Espey, Country Director of Plan Bangladesh, chaired the programme.

Probak Karim, Learning Advisor of Plan Bangladesh, in his keynote paper said that some 18,000 children, 50 percent of them girls, would be provide with preschool education under the three-year project through 200 institutions.

“The mothers and children will also be given mental support to cope with the post-disaster situation,” he added.

Appreciating the initiative, the state minister urged the organizers to run school feeding programme in the backward areas for providing food security for the poor.

“I believe the ECCD project will be more successful if school feeding programme could be introduced under the project,” she told the function.

Edward Thomas said the ECCD project is designed for strengthening the capacities of local authority, non-state actors and communities to develop and manage ECCD activities in disaster-prone areas.

He also said lessons learned from this project will be disseminated nationally.

Sayed Nurul Alam, Executive Director of SAP Bangladesh, Kamal Hossain, representative of Save the Children USA, Farida Akhter, head of IT Department of Brac University, and MA Khaled, Chairman of Barguna Upazila, also spoke at the programme.

BDST: 1340 HRS, June 20, 2010
RT/LY/MUA