BRIDGE
(Bengalis Reaching into Dual-Guided Education)

Founded by Emily Akbar and Anya Sen, BRIDGE (Bengalis Reaching into Dual-Guided Education) is an annual education summer program for primary school children in a small village in Barisal, Bangladesh. Our mission is to improve the quality of education in Bangladesh through interactive learning, bridging the educational deficiency gap. Currently, in Bangladesh, more than 4.3 million children aged 6-15 years are not in school, and around 42 million people in Bangladesh are still illiterate.  Because education dictates future life growth and understanding, it is important for us to provide a step in improving the quality of Bangladesh’s education in one village that will help kids acquire the knowledge and skills to succeed in life. In the summer of 2023, we conducted an online 2-week course in which we partnered with the Jahanara Israil School and taught over 60 students subjects in English and Math. Not only did we have exciting discussions and assign creative projects for most of the coursework, but we also shipped over whiteboards and other supplies for students to use beyond the BRIDGE classroom. We utilized a reward system to encourage students to stay motivated, overall teaching us more about teaching/tutoring skills. At the same time, we were able to greatly connect to our family’s culture in Bangladesh by learning more about our students’ lives. Indeed, our students regularly taught us Bangla words and taught us about their traditions during different holidays. Overall, employing methods our teachers at Horace Mann have used in their curriculums, we facilitate a type of interactive learning that uniquely increases our students’ appreciation of education—a small step in bridging the education gap.