Easy Like Water

Short Synopsis

“Easy Like Water” is a feature documentary that tells the story of how solar-powered floating schools are turning the front lines of climate change into a community of learning.

Description/Treatment

In Bangladesh, solar-powered floating schools are turning the front lines of climate change into a community of learning.  As the water steals the land, one man's vision is re-casting the rising rivers as channels of communication, and transforming people's lives.

In Bangla, “Easy like water” translates roughly as “piece of cake.”  The irony is that in Bangladesh -- with a population half that of the U.S. crammed into the equivalent of Iowa, hovering at sea level and comprised of a massive river delta downstream from the Himalayas -- water poses a relentless threat.  Increasingly violent cyclones flood low-lying areas, while glacier melt raises the rivers.  In a land of extreme resource competition, rising waters steal farmland, force migration, and make transportation routes impassable. Conservative estimates are that flooding will cover 20% of Bangladesh by 2030, creating more than 20 million “climate refugees.”   

But Mohammed Rezwan, an architect by training, has conjured up the equivalent of environmental Jujitsu, harnessing the power of water to educate and unify the community.  Rezwan’s idea is simple and elegant.  “Bangladesh is a land of water, and during the five month monsoon season two-fifths of the country is flooded,” he says.   “Children can't go to school, so we thought the school should come to them.”

With a fleet of solar-powered, internet-enabled school boats, his organization, Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha ("self-reliance), is bringing education to impoverished Bangladeshis, including many girls who have never had access to school before.  

One of Shidhulai’s most transformative effects is on girls’ education.   Due to religious and cultural norms, as well as concerns over safety, girls are not allowed to move about freely, ruling out commuting to school for many in these areas.  By effectively “bringing the mountain to Mohammed” (or Munira), the school boats are introducing thousands of rural girls into the educational system for the first time.  Study after study shows that educating girls and women is a crucial step in improving public health and promoting economic development.  Girls and women constitute 70% of the users of the Shidhulai boat programs. “There’s no way we can move forward without empowering our womenfolk,” says Rezwan. The group has also formed Girl Child Rights Associations, advocating equal treatment, and reporting incidents of child trafficking.  The story will pay special attention to the social benefits – and frequent challenges – of bringing education to girls and women.  

In addition to traditional schooling, curriculum, the Mobile Internet-Educational Units on Boats offer a host of other services: libraries, adult literacy classes and practical education in sustainable farming, climate change, computer training, micro-enterprise, health, and human rights.   Although each boat can accommodate 35 students, there are legions more people to serve.  To address this, the boats are equipped with sail-cloths that serve as large projection screens, so that the boats can anchor and provide educational shows to large audiences onshore.  

Rezwan has applied his vision to other locally-scaled enterprises, most notably the manufacture and distribution of bicycle-powered pumps for irrigation.  Produced for $50 (creating local jobs) and powered by foot, these pumps allow farmers to irrigate during the dry season, increasing crop production, while replacing diesel-powered pumps and their associated costs and pollution.

Rezwan sees Bangladesh’s future, and it will float.  He has extended the school boat concept to create floating health clinics and adult skills training.  He is now working on entire boat villages and floating vegetable gardens with a bed of roots and dirt on water.

So far, the project is reaching just a small fraction of the 17,000 communities in Bangladesh that are only accessible by water, but it could help many more.  Beyond Bangladesh, scalable versions of the project have great potential to serve waterside communities in Southeast Asia, India, and West Africa.  These concepts are not just limited to the developing world: due to increasing flooding in low-lying Holland, Dutch architects are now designing buildings that float.  Such pioneering efforts and innovative action to address pressing global concerns are at the heart of social entrepreneurship.

Bangladesh has a tiny carbon footprint, emitting just 0.3 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, the pollutant most linked to global climate change.   It is us – the people of the industrialized world – who are contributing to the rising waters.  And while this story may seem far away now, the oceans are all connected. Their future is ours as well.