REGINA - Zarrin Ananna, a student at the University of Regina studying psychology, was recently awarded the Outstanding Youth Philanthropist Award for her work in the community.
Ananna runs a tutoring program in collaboration with Mother Teresa Middle School in Regina called Study Smart, where she helps young kids learn writing and math.
She first got the idea to run the program after going back to her home country, Bangladesh, last year.
Ananna saw many girls in villages working as maids. Seeing kids at such a young age having to work made Ananna realize, "this is not okay. This is their time [the young kids] to be educated, have some education and get paid at the same time so they don't have to work."
She mentioned how one girl in Bangladesh told her, "I genuinely want to learn. I understand people might think math is a scary thing, but I genuinely want to learn. But I cannot learn because I have to earn money for my family because we come from a very poor family."
After Ananna decided to help educate the children of Bangladesh, she secured "a place right outside one of my relative's house. I rented out [the place] and what we did [was the tutoring] for three months. It was just the girls only [in like] kind of like a tutoring service slash school. It's called Madrasa. What we did is we gave them education, their curriculum education, like their national language, which is Bengali. And we tutored them [in] math, English and religious study, which they wanted to do."
Ananna also provided the girls with three meals a day and living wages so the girls didn’t spend time working and not getting the proper education.
Through her efforts, she raised $1,500 in the country, which helped the children get notebooks, pencils, and textbooks so they could get a better education.
She ended up doing tutoring in Bangladesh for three months before returning back to Regina to continue her studies.
Ananna kept thinking to herself, "I can do something like that over here too, because I tutor kids as well."
She started a mentorship program at the U of R, which led to Ananna getting in contact with the principal of Mother Teresa Middle School.
Ananna presented her idea to the principal, and from there, a dialogue started. There was an initial plan from Ananna to bring students from North Central to the U of R, but some kids likely could not afford to bus.
The Regina Open Door Society also got in contact with her, saying they were struggling to get any kids to show up to their tutoring sessions. Through more dialogue, Ananna and the school agreed to do tutoring sessions at the end of the school day. Originally, those sessions happened twice a week, but it's now only once.
Ananna pointed out the reason they decided to do this. "These kids parents have at least two jobs to live by today's economy. This is coming from the principal [of the school], right? And nobody else was doing something like that [tutoring], like coming to their school. It was saving their time. I was also saving. To be honest, [their] stress because now they don't have to go home and have all of this homework burden in their head and kind of talk it through, and nobody's there to help them."
When Ananna started tutoring at the school, she realized some kids "really needed the help."
Ananna pointed out research shows literacy levels in the province are at a lower rate. She added the pandemic "impacted their learning or literacy level so badly that some of my students don't even know basic math skills."
Learning online makes it harder for students to absorb information, as Ananna felt she was struggling with her courses during the pandemic because she could not focus on online learning.
For this reason, Ananna and other students at the U of R participate in the weekly sessions to help children struggling with their learning to catch up.
To ensure the students understand the material, Ananna encourages them to text her whenever they need help.
At the end of every session, Ananna described how grateful the students are, "which kind of melts my heart every time", said Ananna.
Because of Ananna’s contributions to Regina, she was nominated for the Outstanding Youth Philanthropist Award.
While Mother Teresa Middle School was going to nominate Ananna, she was actually nominated by Little Dreamers Daycare. During the summer, Ananna helped build and paint the daycare for the owner.
She found out from the daycare that they nominated her for the award because they felt she should be recognized for all her efforts in the community.
Ananna was "grateful for receiving the award." She added, "it's a starting point for me. It encourages me and my volunteers to aim a little higher and, achieve the educational gap that there is in our community at this point and kind of like, bring those gaps together and just close it a little bit, however possible we can."
Once Ananna is done with university, she wants to go into law school. Eventually, she wants to provide free counselling sessions in the community.
She mentioned hearing younger people tell her they would greatly benefit from having free counselling.
Ananna will continue to strive for more accessibility for students and the community.
