About the Home & School

We now have three sites:

Bhola Garden situated on a main road outside the town of Bhola is the original and main site. This is where the children live and the classroom teaching and remedial therapy takes place. The tailoring, metal and wood workshops are also here until the new workshops are built. 

Valumia is agricultural land 10 kms from Bhola Garden, where the agricultural training is centred. 

Supari Bagan ("Nut-Tree Garden") is the recently acquired site for the proposed new metal and woodwork training facilities. It is a 10 minute walk from Bhola Garden. 

Accommodation

Initially Bhola Garden could take up to 15 resident children with a further 20 attending classes or therapy on a daily basis. In 2009 a new children's hostel was completed along with a much bigger kitchen. This increased the residential capacity to 50 children. In practice the hostel's capacity is proving to be substantially greater than 50 but we cannot take many more until the staffing, playground and training facilities are expanded to cope with the extra children.

Medical care

Ali's daughter is a doctor. She is always available for consultation by telephone and obtains drug supplies for the home. It is rarely necessary to call out another local doctor.

Ali has an arrangement with a surgeon at the hospital in Dhaka, who is expert at operations on cleft lips. Every so often a group are taken over on the launch and the operations are all done in one batch.  Recently, however, the surgeon has been able to perform these operations in the hospital at Barisal, the district town only a short ferry ride from Bhola.  Furthermore,  operations were successfully carried out in Barisal on two children with club feet and we expect to arrange for more such operations in future.

There are therapy facilities for developing balance and other sensory functions, particularly for the blind and those with cerebral palsy.

Assistive devices are tailor-made in the workshop both for resident children and for children who do not attend the school.

Education

Basic education in reading, writing in both Bangla and western script and arithmetic is provided in the classrooms. Classes are held morning and afternoon 6 days a week.

All children and staff are taught sign language.

Assembly takes place every morning.  The children learn simple exercises, how to balance and how to march in time.

Singing  and dancing is the final class of the day.   Music is provided by the blind girls.

Training

Training for the older children who cannot for whatever reason transfer to mainstream school is provided in the tailoring classroom, the metal and woodwork workshop and, for farming, in the vegetable garden at Bhola Garden and the much larger land at Valumia.

The aim is that the children should reach a certificated level of achievement and, if appropriate, transfer to more advanced training at a technical college or transfer straight into employment.