The joy of learning

Among the Rohingya children who have fled Myanmar, there is a great desire to learn and grow. It is an enormous untapped resource, and it is urgent that we nurture their quest for knowledge.
Fourteen-year-old Muhammad is smiling when he talks about what he has learned today. He attends one of Unicef’s learning centres in the squalid and overcrowded refugee camps in Bangladesh that have received Rohingya refugees fleeing rape, torched villages and killings in Myanmar.
Now he is safe, and goes to a learning centre on top of a small hill for two hours every weekday to learn as much as possible including math, his mother-tongue Burmese and English. English is his favorite subject. “Learning English is the best”, he says, and explains that this is the reason why he is rather content with life in the camp. Now he has the chance to learn new things – something that was not possible for him back in Myanmar.
His joy of learning and eagerness to learn as much as possible is something that is palpable among children in all of the camps. You see many smiles and laughter when a new poem has been learned by heart and when the children proudly show you that they can now count to ten in English.
Muhammed is one of more than 350,000 Rohingya children and adolescents who have found safety in Bangladesh. Unicef plans to scale up the number of learning centres from 378 learning to 1,400, in order to reach 200,000 children over the next year.
The learning centres provide early education to children aged 4 to 6 years, as well as what could be described as a very basic education to children aged 6 to 14 years. In each learning centre, there are three shifts every day to try to accommodate as many children as possible. They are being taught by a Burmese teacher and a teacher from the Bangladeshi host community.
The learning centre cannot provide children with formal schooling of many hours per day but is a first step in responding to a severe and acute humanitarian crisis. It is a safe haven for two hours every day where they can also make new friends and where they can find psychosocial support, if needed.
In the short term, the learning centres provide a sense of normality in a very extraordinary and precarious situation. In the long term, it is also an investment, both in the children themselves and in the future of this region. One can only imagine what can become of these children if over time they can enjoy full access to quality education and formal schooling.
The Rohingya children – as all children in South Asia – should have the possibility to grow and be challenged in this way. The new generation is our resource for tomorrow and it is our job and duty to nurture their quest for knowledge.
As we work to support all children’s eagerness to learn and grow intellectually, we will also stand firm for the Rohingya children’s quest to learn. They have already suffered tremendous loss. We should certainly not allow this emergency to rob them of their future. Instead, they need a sense of hope. As we all know, education can transform a child’s life. And education is the only way forward if we want to genuinely help Rohingya children thrive and grow to become productive members of their community.
The writer is the regionaldirector of Unicef’s Regional Office for South Asia.