DtM Launches Collaboration with CMES Bangladesh
Design that Matters has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Centre for Mass Education in Science (CMES) in Bangladesh. The MOU paves the way for a collaboration between the two organizations around "Tools for Self-Directed Learning".
Project Background
Building on our experience with the Kinkajou Microfilm Projector, DtM and partner CMES have launched a new product development cycle around "Tools for Self-Directed Learning". In most developing countries, there are not enough teachers to meet the demand for elementary, secondary and adult education. Our goal is to develop a low-cost, context-appropriate tool, or family of tools, that allow students to proceed with their studies as a supplement to, or even independent of, direct interaction with a teacher--along with the necessary manufacturing, distribution and customer financing channels to meet this need at scale.
Our client for this project is the Center for Mass Education in Science (CMES) in Bangladesh. CMES director Dr. Muhammad Ibrahim is an Ashoka Fellow and an expert in pedagogical innovation and implementation. Through CMES, this project has the potential to reach over 50,000 students each year.
About the Center for Mass Education in Science (CMES)
The Centre for Mass Education in Science (CMES) is a national NGO in Bangladesh established in 1978. Its mission is to provide science and technology education to disadvantaged communities, with the goal of providing the technical skills necessary to lead a successful, healthy life. Focusing its attention on rural children and adolescents, CMES has developed an innovative, technology-based, vocational second chance education system.
CMES's Basic School System is comprised of life-oriented basic (primary) education, skills training and use of appropriate technology, and awareness of health and environmental issues. All three components interact with each other to make education more meaningful for the students. CMES currently runs complete School Systems in 20 areas of Bangladesh, serving more than 20,000 children each year.
During the course of this work, CMES realized that poor, adolescent girls have always been a severely disadvantaged group in Bangladesh, robbed of a healthy adolescence by traditional social constraints such as early marriage and childbearing. With the goal of empowering these girls to succeed within this traditional society, CMES started its Adolescent Girls Program (AGP) in 1991. This program now enrolls more than 30,000 girls. These girls learn about the social issues that affect them, take a pledge not to marry before the legal age of 18, and can take out loans from a microcredit bank to start small businesses using the skills learned at AGP. This has been a very successful flagship program in Gender and Development in South Asia, earning many accolades and inspiring imitations at home and abroad.
In conjunction with both of these educational programs, CMES conducts local research and development into appropriate technologies and their market-level adaptation. As they note in their 2003 annual report, "we take a technological concept and transform it into a small commercial enterprise earning money for the young people." CMES offers students training in various trades, out of which a student selects one or more as a vocation. Every year thousands of students are provided technical training at various levels in the Basic School System. These include a number of marketable trades, such as carpentry, production of candles and soap, poultry farming, home gardening, mushroom cultivation, vermicomposting, masonry construction, pottery, metalworking, garment manufacture and leatherworking. A student does not usually stick to learning one trade; rather, he or she receives training in minor trades at the beginning of the program, and later learns major trades such as electrics and various types of shop work.
Each module of technical education has been designed to transform the students into skilled workers and entrepreneurs. In a country where 35% of the population is under 14 years old, this early vocational education helps lay the groundwork for rural Bangladesh's economic and social development.
About CMES Founder Dr. Muhammad Ibrahim
Through CMES, Director Muhammad Ibrahim has devoted much of his time in the research and implementation of appropriate technology, livelihood-oriented education and gender empowerment for the rural disadvantaged youth. He is the author of 37 books and many published papers. His weekly or fortnightly television program on 'science for the people' has been a familiar feature in the country for three decades now.
Dr. Ibrahim has produced since 1961, while still in high school, Bijnan Samoeeki, the first popular science monthly in the country, and has been its editor and publisher ever since, over the 43 years of its regular publication. This monthly has helped create a rich popular science literature in Bangla language, and pioneered a vibrant science club movement around the country including the rural areas. He is an Ashoka Fellow and a Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur.
Photos from CMES Bangladesh:
See the full Press Release [PDF]
Representatives from DtM and CMES at a workshop in January 2005To read more Design that Matters news, return to the DtM Blog Main Page, or choose one of the article archives from the drop-down menus at the top of this page.
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