Swim for your lives. Every year some areas of Bangladesh suffer from severe floods and mudslides. Nevertheless, many Bangladeshi children do not know how to swim and therefore are potential victims to drowning. In the context of our project “Children & Sports in Bangladesh”, which was launched in 2013 and recently reached completion, HOPE’87 conducted several swim classes, particularly for street kids and disadvantaged children, in order to improve their chances of surviving in a disaster situation. Consequently, the child mortality rate due to drowning has already decreased.
Our interventions concerning the swim skills of the children are but one aspect of this innovative project. We also launched several sports events and competitions in cooperation with local schools, children’s and youth clubs and local authorities. We were able to organize several sports training camps where children learned different games and sports techniques. During these events the children had the possibility not only to develop their physical skills, but through their engagement in such an event, they were able to foster their social and cultural skills too. One of the most visible immediate impacts was the higher participation in sportive activities in the diverse schooling institutions. The children’s interest and motivation for taking part in sports events and game-like activities has increased enormously. As a very fortunate result, the local schools dropout rate has started to decrease. As expected, the children’s participation in sports activities fostered their motivation for going to school, making them more attentive and work harder in class as well at home.
As a long-term result of our project intervention a community based sports culture has been developed in the local communities.
