Who, in his right mind, would move his family from one of the most beautiful and prosperous cities in the world to one of the poorest, dirtiest, hopeless slums on the planet?
Gem Munro did just that. He picked up his family and moved them from scenic Vancouver to the unimaginable squalor of Bangladesh, and he explained why to members of the Rotary Club of St. Albert on Friday morning.
“It’s (Bangladesh) always on the top of the list you don’t want to be on and it’s always on the bottom of the list you do want to be on,” Munro told the club, referring to the city’s ranking in the world. “It is pretty stunning how bad a city can be.”
Munro and his wife Tanyss founded the Amarok Society, which is driven to improve the education of disadvantaged people across Canada and abroad. Since 1992, the Munros have been teaching that education is the only way to promote peace and fight ignorance.
He said they were the only people working with women in the slums of Bangladesh, teaching them math, how to read and write in their local language, and English language skills.
Instead of building schools and bringing in teachers, Munro told the Rotary club that they expect the mothers to teach at least five children in their neighbourhood. They attend school for two hours every day, after which they return to their homes and educate the youth.
“We also have a very good program of teaching mothers how to treat child development,” he said. “Because normal treatment of these children in these slums has been appalling and very harsh.”
Munro said he does not expect to rescue every mother from an unfortunate circumstance; the goal is to give her life more value in the community.
He stressed that educating children will give young, intelligent girls a chance to prosper and change the attitude of boys toward their mothers and sisters.
“They will not be able to see women as merely brainless baby machines,” he said.
“They will have gained their education from a woman and from a sister and we simply do not see those primitive backward prejudices surviving into today’s generation.”
He added that many women educated by the society took up celebrating International Women’s Day.
Using their new literacy skills, they made banners and paraded through the slums to call for the improvement of women’s lives and education.
Some also started to challenge the law of dowry. The law states that the family of a girl must pay the family of the groom to have their daughter married.
The younger the girl is the less a family pays.
Challenging the law can lead to ostracism, shaming until death, acid attacks or murder, said Munro, but the mothers are actively campaigning nonetheless.
“They feel they are not just students and teachers but members of a movement,” he said.
“The movement is of their creation, not of ours.”
Munro said the society has worked with Rotary clubs across Canada and in Bangladesh for many years and valued the partnership.
