MAIYA SCHOOL
Maiya School is a non-for-profit organisation that funds and operates schools for adolescent girls in refugee camps. Their goal is to give teenage girls living in displacement around the world the opportunity to learn, improving their own life and the lives of those around them.
Maiya School's first project is to begin in 2022 in the world's largest refugee camp, the Rohingya Kutupalong refugee camp, located near the coastal city of Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. The school will start by educating 90 adolescent girls and be scaled from there.
WHY THE WORLD NEEDS MAIYA SCHOOL
The founders of Maiya School - Dayna and Pip - have been working on and off since 2017 with a local organisation in the Rohingya refugee camps. In any humanitarian crisis, there are significant challenges for all people affected, but Dayna and Pip were both struck by how many intersecting issues the girls and women in the refugee camp experienced. Displacement combined with gender inequality results in risks of sexual and gender-based violence, child marriage and human trafficking for girls and women. To keep them safe from sexual violence, parents choose to keep their daughters home from school once they reach adolescence. Unfortunately, this reduces outcomes in education, health, livelihoods and social and political participation for girls.Improved gender-inclusivity and targeted interventions are needed to empower adolescent girls, including creating a safe learning environment by using gender-sensitive spaces, recruiting female teachers and supporting menstrual hygiene management. The community says they would send their daughters to a girls-only school - yet no one is offering these classes.
Maiya School is changing this, by opening the first girls-only school in Kutupalong refugee camp. This will give Rohingya adolescent girls the chance to get an education, develop life skills, and build the confidence to achieve their dreams.
THE WOMEN BEHIND IT ALL
Dayna and Pip are high school friends, both motivated by gender equality and human rights for displaced people.
Pip first arrived in the Rohingya Kutupalong refugee camp in December 2017, a few months after the influx of 742,000 refugees into Bangladesh. She volunteered with OBAT Helpers in their education program, supporting them to open and run their learning centres. Since then, Pip has completed a Bachelor of Humanitarian and Development Studies, has interned in sexual and reproductive health for Pacific communities, and is now working in health promotion with migrant and refugee women in Sydney. Pip is passionate about women’s and refugee rights, and believes that empowering women and girls to actualise their full human rights will result in happier, healthier and fairer societies. She wishes to work towards the goal of achieving gender equality globally by empowering refugee girls and women through Maiya School.
Dayna has always had a passion for working with migrant and refugee populations. Based on the recommendation of Pip, she went to volunteer in the Rohingya camps In Bangladesh with OBAT Helpers and discovered great fulfillment and purpose in humanitarian work. Dayna decided to take a job offer working in the camps after her time volunteering and worked there until the pandemic forced a change in plans. Working with the displaced Rohingya population, she found her specific passion for women's rights and is now completing a Masters degree thesis on understanding gender-based violence that occurs in refugee camp settings. Dayna believes in the potential to transform outcomes of communities and society through the education of women, and has big hopes for Maiya School being an integral part of this.
