Following 7 years of investment in the host communities of Cox's Bazar, Room to Read Bangladesh’s flagship early-Grade literacy project on a phase-out course organized school- and District-level workshops to consolidate project achievement and learning, and also handover best practices as well as the existing resources to the government.

In the District-level phase-out event on 15 November 2024, we placed findings from several assessments and demonstrated how the project has been instrumental to improving Primary school students’ overall literacy competencies effectively curbing students’ absenteeism and the chances of dropouts in Kutubdia and Ukhiya sub-districts.

The esteemed Director General of the Directorate Of Primary Education (DPE), hon’ble Chairman of the National Curriculum & Textbook Board, Bangladesh (NCTB) including educationists, researchers as well as the District Administration, WFP officials and INGOs implementing programs in Cox’s Bazar were present at the event.

Senior officials of Room to Read Bangladesh presented compelling research findings showing how students supported by the project now score well above the envisioned literacy competency benchmarks. A video interview of Sumaiya - one of the students supported by the project since 2018 - played at the event stood testament to achievements also implicating minimized learning loss and learning gap that resulted from COVID-induced prolonged school closure.

With funding support from U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)'s ‘McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program’, and commendable guidance from United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), Room to Read Bangladesh extended technical support to the project since January 2018 to pre-COVID. During COVID till November 2024, we served both as a technical lead and the sole implementer.

In community-level workshops organized in government Primary schools across Kutubdia and Ukhiya sub-districts, our mandate was to help local stakeholders reminisce the project milestones achieved with consolidated efforts. We also facilitated discussions over the best practices headteachers and respective school management committees are ready to take over – given the project resources, improvement of overall capacity of teachers, willingness of the community as well as the need of the students per government resources already allocated to the school level.

Also at the handover platform, we took the opportunity to unveil the digital version of the Grades 1-2 textbooks. Hon’ble Chairman of NCTB launched these resources – first of its kind in Bangladesh.