When there are too many marginalizing factors between a child and their education, a school can’t reach them anymore. But their mother still can.

The Amarok Society open schools for mothers who live in the slums of Bangladesh and Pakistan. Each mother then goes home and teaches her children and her neighbours’ children everything she’s learned.

The inclusive curriculum, combined with the dedication and courage of the mothers they teach, can overcome the obstacles that poverty, religion, gender, and disability put in the way of global education.

Lockdowns due to Covid meant that the schools for the mothers had to close and changes had to be made to who the mothers taught in order to avoid the spread of the virus. But, the mothers have continued to teach and the schools are looking to reopen.

In many places, the "Amarok mothers' have become champions and leaders in their communities, supporting others, preventing arranged marriages of underage girls, and encouraging women to become entrepreneurs and help support their families financially.

"When we educate mothers, they not only directly import education into the families, they establish a culture of education in their children and entrench the practice of learning. When we educate, say, a slum-dwelling teen-aged boy, he will, understandably, seek to use his educational advantage to escape his circumstance. How could we ever expect or counsel otherwise? Mothers, however, tend to stay where they are, applying their learning to their existent circumstance, even when the education has led to a woman’s entrepreneurship.

The higher the educational level she achieves, the higher the expectations she has of herself and her children, and the more determinedly she will work to reach them."