REGISTERED CHARITY NUMBER: 1170236

LOTUS CHILDREN'S EDUCATION TRUST -LCET

CURRENT PROJECTS

Our current projects in brief: 

1) Running a Primary school 

2) Running a Junior-high school

3) Residential accommodation with foods and other well-beings

4) Monastic Education- Pali College, training and Library for everyone

5) Training on environmental sustainability to tackle climate change

6) Mindfulness training and capacity building program 

At present the core activity of LCET is delivered from the ‘Lotus Children’s Home (LCH). We have recently built four residential dormitories: two for girls and the other two for boys, donated by CHT development board, our own funds and Firefly Mission. There are two small house for novices and monks. There are also two schools built by tins and brick wall. One is used for primary school while the other is for junior-high school. 

 We have provided 70% free foods, free accommodations, free tuitions, free educational equipment, free sanitary or other required items to 253 destitute and underprivileged children in 2024.  20%--30% of expenses of these children are generally supported by their parents, for example, we requested their parents to donate rice or vegetables for their children. Parents' contributions are varied depending on the types of their livelihood. Many parents made one-off donation when they earned some money from their works while others are not at all contributed. There are also 60 orphaned children in 2024. Their parents are either died or separated. These children are fully supported by our trust.  

There are 17 teachers at Lotus Children Home. 10 of them stays outside the Lotus Children Home while 7 live in the premise along with 2 cooks. They all look after the well-being of these children. Without the facility of the ‘Lotus Children’s Home’ these children will have no or very limited chance to attend school and access to a clean and safe living environment because they are coming from very remote, hilly places where no school available in their areas and they are extremely poor people.  

Along with school curriculum and academic classes, these children also receive specially designed classes on ethics, morality, meditation and sustainability. This will help them understand the nature around their environment and become productive citizen in the society, even in the world. Our project operates as exactly stated in aims and objectives. (See our aims and objectives and mission statement).

We managed to provide full facilities to 10 students when we started to recruit children in 2012. The number gradually and steadily increased in the following years: 16 children in 2013; 20 children in 20215; 65 children in 2019;103 children in 2020; 130 children in 2021; 151 children in 2022; and 190 children in 2023. There are 253 children in 2024. The future children's number will depend on people's supports. 

We are working hard in seeking supporters for these students’ requisites - i.e. food, educational supplies etc. You can sponsor a child with only $30.00 (USA) for a month. This cost includes foods, accommodation, sanitary and educational equipment.  You can join others to sponsor a child with as little as $3.00 or you can donate a half of a child expenses with $15.00 a month.  

LOTUS Primary and Junior-high School: From the beginning of Lotus Children Home, our intention was to set up a full fledged schools to offer our own philosophy and practice along with general academic teachings, but it took 7 years to set up our own school, especially junior - high school. Students from different remote areas of CHT (Chittagong Hill Tracts) looked for an accommodation from the beginning of Lotus Children Home.  We started to accommodate them from 2012, and number increased each year as you have noticed above. We run classes from class one to five by own teachers. There is a primary school at Muralipara two miles away from us. As we have not yet received oversight body's permission, our children took their exam at Muralipara school. Occasionally, our students walked to this school for their class, but it was unsafe, and hazardous especially during the monsoon season. This led us to set up a full fledged primary school. This school is now running well with our own funds.

There is a problem to offer classes after the primary school as we run classes only one to five. After year five, these students need to continue their studies at a junior-high school.  There is one junior-high school five miles away from us. Initially, our students took the local transports to attend their classes. However, it was quite difficult for them to arrive at the school before the beginning of the class. There is only one bus running in the morning. The bus arrival time was also proved to be unpredictable.  On the other hand, it was not easy for us to pay the required transport fees every day. When they missed the bus, they would either miss the classes or end up using the private transport. This is costly to send out children to anyone of these two schools. 

As we have managed to accommodate more students from the remote part of CHT, we decided to establish our own residential school.  This indeed helps us to focus on our own aims and objectives in running Lotus Children Home. The primary school is now running with five teachers. Salaries of these teachers are not funded by the local government but the local government has authorized us to run from class 1 to 5. The local government also oversees us in line with the Bangladesh government’s education policy. Similarly our junior-high is also making progress every years. The government has been authorised to run this junior-high school since 2022.

 However, we can only afford to pay 8000 Taka for a teacher. The government’s salary for a primary school’s teacher is about 22000 Taka, an equivalent to £180.  So, at the moment, they are rather working as volunteers for us. Our agreement was that they will be paid  5000 BDT at the beginning, roughly $50 for the first year, but every year their salary will increase up to 10000.00 BDT roughly $130. We are highly pleased with their kind and generous support in teaching and running the school.  We know our efforts are limited as none of us good in terms of financial circumstances but our heart is big in terms of compassion and wisdom.  With this big heart, our only choice is go ahead with our objectives.​

Followings lists are our current activities funded by our limited funds. Please find our recent funds here for foods. If you are interested to help this noble cause, you are welcome to share your generosity for the costs below:

1)    Monthly expenses for a student’s foods, soaps, bills, school items etc. roughly cost $30.00. This is the minimum cost we can afford to provide for a child. We are looking for sponsors to build a dining hall to avoid eating in an open space.

2)    There are 17 teachers for both primary and junior-high schools in 2024. 7 of them are resident at Lotus Children's Home and look after the children well-being at the LCH.  Each teacher salary we pay 8000 BDT (roughly £60) this year 2024.  Until now, these teachers are kindly serving with a half of the originally intended salary as stated earlier. 

3)    To build a proper (four storey) high school building roughly costs $ 70,000 -80,000.00 US dollars (as estimated by a local builder). We would like to welcome your active participation in this noble project; please email us: lotuschildreneducation@gmail.com  We will send you our engineer's map. 

4).    Training on environmental sustainability and basic health knowledge to the local people, which is normally held twice a year, and each training needs to spend about 500 US dollars.  

5).    Mindfulness Training and Capacity Building Program for residents and registered people (from local and different regions) on every first Friday of the month. It has been running- free of charge but not many people are interested due to the fact that they have to work everyday in their farms or labouring job. We learn from this practice that people in this region are thinking as this: survival is important than learning mindfulness or philosophy of the capacity building program. We may close this program in near future. 

You are welcome to send your donation, in whatever amount, directly to Bangladesh or, if you are in the EU, you may donate to our UK account either by a monthly standing order of £3.00 p/m or more, or by a one-off donation. Every penny donated is meaningful for this project. Please see read our income and expenditure's report here. Donate here!

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