Today I joined the Salabalath literacy center school teachers to their weekly village visit. There we visited the children who have not been attending school lately in order to find out "why?"
Most of the reasons they give pertain to distance... like the school is far (it really is!), it's difficult to walk alone, need to be in a group, bicyles not in working condition, no money for repairs, etc.
I thought to myself about that old saying: "If the mountain cannot come to Mohammed, then Mohammed comes to the mountain." In this country, why couldn't we bring the education to the village then instead of them coming to us? For villagers the essential of education would not be the building or the book, but rather the teacher. Why not a group of roaming village teachers that could live in the village rotating for periods of time. And the ministry could just approve the program or the curriculum to be taught. Funding institutions, I suppose, could finance the development program rather than the building/structure. Might be cheaper too!
This style worked for the Christian missions out there in Papua New Guinea... priests go to the villages for their pastoral needs since the church was far. Couldn't this work too for education?
Let me reflect - even in the Salesian context - do I necessarily have to wait for them to come or could I start going out to them?