Bengal Shikhha, Sangskriti O Samaj Shilon Karjakram
Derived from its pledge to promote and enhance the benefit of art and culture in social development, the Foundation is actively engaged in dispensing education. The Foundation’s initiatives at this end include Srijanshil Shikkhakata Anushilon-- Capacity enhancement of teachers using the tools of the performing arts, Sangskriti Sangbed-- Appreciation and practice of music and arts among teachers in hard-to- reach and underprivileged areas, Sangskriti O Samaj Shilon –Engaging the community in cultural and the arts through a Functional Literacy Primary Education Programme. These and other programmes are designed to seek novel ways to re-interpret mainstream cultural practice and find new inroads for greater dissemination and wider participation.

Srijanshil Shikkhakata Anushilon
The programme entails training primary school teachers on the elements of different performing arts. The tools of theater and drama have been chosen for the first stage of this programme. Theatre, it is felt, offers elements that people are naturally receptive to. The necessary focus on bodily and gestural movement, role playing, voice throw and poise- these coalesce to raise the performer’s self-awareness and may help to express newer facets of the learner’s personality. This enhanced awareness is likely to lead to better control of the mind and the body, and eventual empowerment of the learner. Teachers who have been exposed to this programme are equipped with alternative methods of creative communication with children. This widens the scope for empathy and bonding.
The programme was first launched at the Anandapath primary School in Tangail, Bangladesh, in October 2008. The Anadapath curriculum offers an alternative approach to education with major emphasis on the arts. With that in view, Anandapath was assumed to be the ideal ground for trial and development of the theater-education model. The teachers of Anandapath were inducted and trained on Acting, Dialogue Delivery, Developing and Understanding Characters, Composition and Choreography, through 120 hours of interactive sessions including practice and demonstration. Regular workshops, lectures and drama practice are at the core of this model.
A play was developed on the basis of the model programme and was performed publicly at the Children’s Cultural Festival held in Tangail in 2009. The results of the first six months have evidenced significant improvement of teachers in communication skill, expression, presentation and quality of contact with students. The model is soon to be replicated in other schools in outlying areas.

Sangskriti Sangbed
The programme is built around appreciation, orientation and practice of the arts, with particular suitability for displaced and isolated communities. There are numerous regions in Bangladesh that are peopled with communities uprooted from their original homes. The unpredictable shift in river courses often force people to take refuge in newly formed shoals or chars. These displaced, isolated, diverse and in many ways de-sensitized communities need to re-orient themselves culturally to establish identity and find roots, to help them start life anew. Sangskriti Sangbed addresses teachers of primary schools that operate in shifting communities. The first leg of this programme has been tried out with Char dwellers of Gainbanda and Rangpur in collaboration with Friendship, a local NGO that dispenses healthcare and primary education in Char areas. An initial assessment of teachers at Friendship schools suggests encouraging results— a degree of interest in the arts has been generated.

Sangskriti O Samaj Shilon- Promoting community art and cultural practice
In the northern Char areas where the community is isolated from the mainland and life is an incessant struggle between poverty and uncertainty, this programme seeks to engage people in community cultural practices The epicenter of these cultural practices are the schools of the Chars. It is assumed that small-scale festivals and melas in such areas, centred on the school, and involving immediate and nearby communities, will energise people and infuse bonding that may ameliorate their sense of rootlessness. It is hoped that this programme will commence in the third quarter of 2009. With appropriate partnership these programs can be expanded to different areas of Bangladesh.

Pathshala -Education and Functional Literacy Program
Under this programme the Foundation has set up non-formal education institutions for primary, secondary and functional education in underdeveloped urban areas. A pilot project was taken up in 1999, wherein Bengal Foundation organized and ran 10 primary education centres in Kuril slum, in Dhaka. After 16 months of operation the education centres-- including infrastructure, books and logistics-- were handed over to local organizations in the community. The centres were able to provide primary education to 300 students at any one time, and were successful in bringing the majority of children between the ages of 6 to 11 under the coverage of this programme. It’s success was largely attributed to a special curriculum developed by Bengal Foundation by juxtaposing the National Textbook Board and other relevant educational material, for this programme.
Keeping in mind the fundamental aim of providing education to the urban underprivileged children in an alternative, participatory manner, Bengal Foundation has been supporting Abdul Khaleque Memorial School- a secondary education institute situated at Basumati, Solmaid, Dhaka- since 1999. Currently, 1,000 students are students are enrolled at the school.