Gates Floats Boat Libraries

Books and computers were practically unheard of in northern Bangladesh until a private humanitarian organization devised a brilliant plan—to deliver free educational resources via library boats. Now, a fleet of about 50 boats regularly docks in villages along the Nandakuja-Atrai-Boral watershed area during the monsoon season, from June to October, bringing education and technology to the largely impoverished, rural population.

“Seeing a computer, let alone touching it, was beyond our wildest imagination,” says Abdul Azad, a farmer from Kalinagar, a village of 4,500 people, which is plagued by unemployment, illiteracy, malnutrition, and lack of electricity. The three-year-old program, which includes boat libraries, boat schools, and Internet boats equipped with solar and fuel-efficient, generator-run computers, mobile phones, multimedia projectors, and other educational resources, delivered information and training to 86,500 families in 2004.

Boat libraries have been hugely successful because efforts to provide education to this region have long been hampered by poor communication and constant flooding. “If the students cannot come to the school… then the school should come to them,” says Abdul Hasanat Mohammed Rezwan, executive director of Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha, a voluntary group which recently received the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s $1 million Access to Learning Award, recognizing a library or organization that provides patrons with innovative, no-cost public access to information.