Rising with the waters

In Bangladesh’s flood-prone districts, floating classrooms help keep kids in school.

Sardar Ronie

This story originally appeared in Earth Island Journal.

---

EVERY morning, in many parts of Bangladesh’s vast floodplains, children wake, dress, eat breakfast and walk from their homes to school. However, their classrooms aren’t located in brick-and-mortar buildings. They are boats that sail around the waterways picking children up at various points before docking for lessons. In the Chalan Beel, a 10-square-mile wetland where seasonal monsoon floods routinely swallow roads and isolate villages, these floating classrooms have changed how children access education.

For twelfth-year student Mahiyam, the difference is simple but profound. ‘This school is very close to my home,’ she says. ‘The regular primary school is far away, and during floods, the roads go underwater. This boat school picks me up and brings me back home after classes.’

Bangladesh’s floodplains – formed by three major rivers, the Brahmaputra, Padma and Meghna, which drain into the Bay of Bengal – comprise some 80% of the country. The country has one of the largest populations in the world at risk of coastal flooding and storm surges that are steadily getting worse as the world warms. In fact, seasonal flooding is so common here that students often can’t get to school.

According to UNICEF, in 2024, the climate crisis disrupted the schooling of 33 million children there. Schools across the country closed for two weeks in April and May due to heatwaves, and many closed again for several additional weeks later that summer due to cyclone-induced flooding.

The situation in the Chalan Beel (‘beel’ means wetland in Bengali), the country’s largest inland wetland, which is fed by more than 40 rivers, is even more dire. In this region, where the monsoons swell the basin into a vast sea-like expanse of water, increasing rainfall combined with unchecked development have led to particularly intense flooding. Locals say that large parts of this region remain underwater for four to five months every year.

Growing up on a riverside in the Chalan Beel, Mohammed Rezwan saw firsthand how flooding could disrupt learning. ‘When the floodwater came, water came from all directions,’ he recalls. ‘Roads went underwater. Schools submerged. People could not grow crops.’ Though his middle-class family had a boat (normally used to transport crops from their agricultural lands), which allowed him to reach school even in difficult weather, he watched friends and relatives who didn’t have similar means lose access to education, when floods cut them off.

So in 1998, Rezwan, a 22-year-old architect at the time, asked himself a simple question: How do you keep education alive when the land itself vanishes underwater? His answer was equally simple: If children cannot reach school, the school must reach the children.

That year, he used $500 from his personal savings to found Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha to provide local children with boat-based learning opportunities. The first such boat school became operational in 2002. More than two decades later, Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha operates 26 boat schools across the central-western districts of Pabna, Natore and Sirajganj, reaching more than 2,300 children annually. Each boat can accommodate around 30 children per shift, and is outfitted with desks, books, school supplies and a shared laptop. Classes – which are held in three shifts a day to accommodate different schedules – are aimed at primary-level education and include a river-based component that focuses on environmental protection and water conservation. The nonprofit also has an explicit mission to educate girls.

The boats themselves are low-tech, built of bamboo and wood, and powered by solar energy. Designed to navigate shallow floodwaters, they are perfectly adapted to the region’s fragile, riverine environment. In 2025, the boat schools remained in operation for 289 days, defying floods, disasters or other natural calamities, Rezwan says.

While the bulk of Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha’s fleet is focused on childhood education, the nonprofit operates eight additional boats that offer farmers training in climate-resilient agriculture. It also runs six floating health clinics that deliver primary care to around 50 patients a day. When severe floods turn villages into islands, boats become emergency shelters. One has a library with some 1,500 books.

In addition to being adapted to the landscape, the floating school programme is deeply rooted in local knowledge. The boats are built by local craftspeople using traditional techniques passed down through generations. Schoolteachers like Hosne Ara, who has been teaching on the boats for around a decade, come from the same communities they serve.

‘I enjoy teaching here. It’s on the river, floating. And the houses are right beside the river. From here, it’s convenient for me,’ she says. ‘I want these kinds of boat schools to exist in many more places where they don’t have them.’

Madhu Sudan Karmakar has been a programme manager with the initiative for around 20 years. ‘Seeing children learn and grow gives me immense joy,’ he says.

Over the past two decades, the floating school system has educated more than 24,000 children, Karmakar says. Some of its earliest students have gone on to university. Rezwan recalls meeting a former student during an award ceremony a few years ago. The young man, who is now a professional photographer, came up to him after the event and thanked him for the boat that started it all. It was an inspiring and proud moment for Rezwan.

For current students like fourth-grader Mohammad Himel Hasan, who loves to recite poems for visitors, the floating classroom is helping shape future ambitions. He says he wants to join the military and serve his country when he grows up.

The boat schools have had an impact in other ways as well. In 2022, Bangladesh formally included floating schools in a climate-resilient education strategy in the country’s national adaptation plan, which extends through 2050. Other organisations, including the large Bangladesh-based development organisation Building Resources Across Communities (BRAC), have also implemented similar programmes. BRAC now operates several boat-based learning centres in other parts of Bangladesh.

‘I was very happy when I saw other NGOs learning from us,’ Rezwan says. ‘Together, we can solve many of our existing challenges and support the government, because government resources are limited.’

Rezwan’s impact hasn’t gone unnoticed. In 2025, UNESCO awarded Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha its Confucius Prize for Literacy, which recognises programmes that promote functional literacy. Last year Rezwan also received a World Fellowship at Yale University for his leadership in the fight for a better world.

As Bangladesh’s State Minister for Primary and Mass Education, Bobby Hajjaj, observed after attending the UNESCO award ceremony: ‘This achievement reminds us that with innovation, commitment and community-driven solutions, quality education can reach every child – no matter where they live.’

Still, the gap between recognition and resources remains significant. In a country of over 170 million people, Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha’s 26 boat schools cover only three districts and reach just a small fraction of flood-impacted students. Over the next five years, Rezwan hopes to expand the school fleet to another 40 districts in the country’s floodplains. He envisions a minimum of 20 boats per district, serving about 72,000 more children. It is a big goal, but he believes it is achievable, provided he can garner international funding.

‘The international donor community should look at community-led initiatives and help young people carry them forward,’ he says. ‘New things take time. If you give them the resources to continue for 10 or 15 years, you will see a remarkable impact.’

In the Chalan Beel, that impact is clear. It arrives every morning by boat and allows classes to continue even when floodwaters cut off roads and villages. As floods increasingly disrupt education around the world, Rezwan’s solution – schools that rise with the waterline – may ripple far beyond Bangladesh.             

Sardar Ronie is a Bangladesh-based journalist with nearly 15 years of experience covering politics, climate change and human rights for outlets including BBC News and DW Asia, bringing stories from the ground to global audiences. He can be reached at sardarronie@gmail.com.

*Third World Resurgence No. 368, 2026/3, pp 2-3