Nearly a million Rohingya refugees live in the Kutupalong camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh — more than half of them children, and most without access to formal schooling. Caritas built 11 child-friendly spaces inside the camp where Essence of Learning could reach them anyway, staffed in part by 44 trained volunteers recruited from within the Rohingya community itself, so the program is run by people the families already trust.
One caregiver described the shift she’s watched in the children who come: “They grow calm, become more polite.” This case study — documented by the Humanitarian Education Accelerator, a UNHCR-led initiative — walks through what it took to build a program that works inside a refugee camp, from the ground up.