Even though we try our best to bring as many children as possible to our day-care-centres, there are still more than enough, who cannot afford the time to stay in school for the entire day. This is mostly due to needing to work in order to help their families out, and many parents would rather force them to contribute to the family income than let them go to school. Still, we in SONNE believe that everybody should have access to education, regardless of their background and circumstances. Which is why, funded by DKA Austria, we initiated the mobile education -project for the poorest of the poor. The concept is simple: have a makeshift class room, with teachers and teaching essentials, that is flexible enough to change places and times to adapt to the students needs and teach them the essentials for two hours per day – which is just enough time that the street children can allow themselves between working and helping out at home.
The children are motivated to learn.
The pilot project has been up and running since November 2017 and so far, has been successfully implemented. From Monday until Tuesday 40 kids are attending our “school” in a publicly rented place, currently a monastery, and there is hope for running mobile classes in other locations like teashops etc. in the near future too. Two of our staff teachers teach the students, whose ages range between eight and fifteen and who come from all over the South Dagon slums. Most of them either sell goods on the market or are trash collectors, but they still come to the lessons with heart-warming enthusiasm.
In addition to mobile education, we can send 30 children into our vocational programme, during the project time (three years), thus being able to provide an education and a training all in one go. To our delight, representatives of DKA Austria have come to visit the mobile education project already and it is suffices to say that we were all inspired with new vigor when we saw the excited smiles of the street children. Another win for education!
The Children of mobile education and our founding bodies, Clemens and Robert.