Community Linkage Empowerment

Community Linkage Empowerment Measures are an innovative set of activities to ignite the interest of rural communities in education, and include projects to link the communities with the schools through parent-teacher meetings and alumni contacts. Schools are encouraged to develop relationships with the community through voluntary societal work by the students guided by the teachers. The successful linkages with the community is the key to sustainability of continual improvement. The following activities are described below.

Parents - Teachers Meeting

Practically all schools hold one or more parents-teachers meeting in a year.

Alumni Link

Alumni in schools in Bangladesh are a largely unutilized resource for the development of the schools. VAB attempts to find out from the school and the community the whereabouts of successful alumni. It then encourages both the alumni and the school/community to develop links with among them and devise ways and means of support of the school from the alumni.

Societal Work

Link with the community is a natural phenomenon in the rural school; the challenge is how to engage the community actively with the development of the school. The VAB activity is to organize voluntary projects to be executed by the students under the guidance of the teachers for accomplishing certain societal goals, such as clean-up, sanitation, women’s safety and security, women’s empowerment, etc.

Approaching the Community

The members of the community generally will be favorable to the idea of helping the school in its development. The VAB activity is to be a catalyst and a guide in mobilizing community support for the school.

VAB’s Community Empowerment Programs

The Table below lists the programs carried out to connect the schools with parents and community leaders. VAB treats success in empowering this relationship as an essential pillar for sustainability.

Table: VAB’s Community Empowerment Programs, 2012-2020

Activity	Name of Programs	Coverage, Schools & Communities	Remarks
Community Engagement	Parents' - Teachers’ Meeting	148
	Education Fair	46	9 Education Fairs
	Mother Assembly	15
Meetings	Round Table with Community Leaders and Government Officials	40
Pandemic Aid	Corona Relief	60	For 1,200 Families
Pandemic Aid	Reusable Mask	17	For 1,650 Individuals