In a country of grinding poverty, you learn quickly to do whatever works which is how GEM Munro and his wife Tanis learned how to build an amazingly effective teaching program in Bangladesh.

The couple have written a book detailing their experiences entitled South Asian Adventures with the Active Poor and will talk about their book at the Cranbrook Public library 7 p.m. Thursday March 11.

Along with Haiti, Bangladesh is considered one of the poorest countries in the world and one of the most dangerous being regularly buffeted with earthquakes, typhoons, tsunamis and floods from the River Ganges.

Aside from growing rice, the other major economic activity in the country is the textile industry where people work 16 hours-a-day, six days-a-week for sweatshop wages of $8 to $10-a-week. Not an easy situation in which to develop an education system, but this is exactly what Munro and his wife are doing.

Their way of getting around all the obstacles against them in the often-battered country is to teach the mothers first, then the mothers go out and teach the children to give them the opportunity that many of the mothers never had.

“We are working with people struggling against their conditions and what we want people to know is our method is actually working in a country where millions are so poor they can't afford to go to school at all,” says Munro.

Because of the poverty, there is very little Western-style public schooling in Bangladesh. Most schools in the country are private and the average family can't afford the fees so the children remain illiterate which continues the poverty cycle.

But working through the Amarok Society, a registered Canadian charity, Munro and his wife have been able to gain access to slums in Bangladesh normally closed to foreigners and train the mothers that will become the country's teachers of the future. Money raised by the Amarok Society supplies the equipment and materials needed and enables the teachers to provide free education for children that have never had a chance to go to school before.

“There's 75 million students in the world too poor to go to school and this is one way of getting around that,” Munro says. Most of the teaching is done in the mothers' homes, which gets around the problem of building costly schools.

Munro, who with his wife has taught on Indian Reserves in Canada, is passionate about his new calling. “To be uneducated is as bad as being underfed. We see that every day in Bangladesh. The question then becomes, what are we going to do about it?
“Ignoring poverty is an insult to the human race. We must take on the responsibility of solving this problem. It's not going away and it affects all of us. There's nothing ‘natural' about poverty and no one can live in isolation from it.”

Munro says he'll show a video at his library presentation, read passages from his book and open up the meeting for a general discussion.