At Dhaka University’s buzzing Teacher-Student Centre (TSC), nine-year-old Yasin Ali balances a clutch of jasmine garlands in one hand and a dog-eared primer in the other. Amid hundreds of street children scraping a living across the campus, Yasin is a rare exception: he is currently the only one enrolled in a formal or accredited school.

For almost every other child selling flowers, clearing dining tables, or scrubbing oily plates in dormitory canteens, education is not a pathway to opportunity; it is an hourly trade-off against hunger.

Two student-led initiatives, School of Ghashful and Tori School, have stepped in to bring basic literacy within their reach. Yet, volunteers acknowledge that bridging the gap between open-air chalkboards and accredited schooling remains a daunting challenge.

The dilemma on campus mirrors a chronic national reality. According to the ‘Survey on Street Children 2022’ conducted by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) and UNICEF, 71.8 percent of street children in Bangladesh can neither read nor write, while more than 36 percent have never set foot in a classroom. For these children, daily survival routinely eclipses formal education.

“Very few of our students ever make it to the formal schooling system,” said Newaz Sharif Arman, president of the School of Ghashful. Several children previously enrolled at Nilkhet Primary School dropped out within weeks because attending regular classes meant forfeiting an entire day’s income.

“Since they have to earn, whether willingly or under family pressure neither the child nor the family wants to sacrifice that income for school,” Arman said.

Gathering students for classes is a daily struggle. TSC security guards often bar street children, forcing volunteers to negotiate for entry or relocate lessons to Bot-tola or Hakim Chattar.

At food stalls, dishwashing boys are released only on rotation during slow hours. “During rush hours, owners cannot spare them at all,” Arman said.

To convince flower-sellers to study for an hour, volunteers frequently compensate them tk 10 to tk 30 from their own pockets for lost sales, pairing lessons with hot tea and snacks.

Yet the thirst to learn persists across generations. At TSC, Rabeya, a woman who sells flowers to evening crowds, sits on the pavement beside her young daughter, sounding out the Bangla alphabet together.

Because canteen workers shift jobs every two to six months and lack mobile phones, Ghashful founded in 2012 with Dhaka University funding has had to recalibrate its ambitions.

Supported by 50 student volunteers across nine residential halls, the initiative now focuses on rapid survival literacy.

“However long a child stays, even two months, we try to ensure they can write their names in Bangla and English and perform basic addition and subtraction,” Arman said. “We do not want them to spend their entire lives illiterate.”

Similar hurdles confront Tori School, launched in July. Operating with around 200 volunteers, it runs weekend learning camps at the High Court premises and Central Shaheed Minar for nearly 60 street children, alongside separate sessions for university staff children.

“Our volunteers bear the costs out of pocket to keep classes consistent,” said Prottoy Mohiuddin, joint convener of Tori School.

As darkness settles over the TSC, the open-air class wraps up. Primers are tucked away into backpacks, and the children immediately blend back into the campus crowds, hawking flowers under street lamps.

For them, a rudimentary lesson in letters offers momentary dignity but without systemic institutional support, their destination remains unmapped.