As the clock strikes 7:00am, Samira is woken up by her mother. Fighting the sleepiness that still overwhelms her, the fourth grader freshens herself up and puts on her school uniform.
Mass urbanisation takes its toll on Dhaka by erasing the scopes for the young ones to have a healthy childhood. The city is no longer child friendly as it fails to provide the amenities and environmental factors needed for the physical and psychological development of children.
Only for a few hours on Friday mornings, Mizan and his brother Raihan were given time off work. They spent it playing cricket on the roof of Selim Super Market at Kaliganjbazar in Keraniganj.
In February every year, when his friends bought books from the national book fair and talked excitedly about reading those, he wished he could have done the same. Abul Kalam Azad had lost his vision from a severe attack of typhoid in childhood. But the thought that visually impaired people like him were deprived of all opportunities to enjoy books made him restless.
Rebecca had lost her father while an infant and witnessed how her mother had struggled to give her a beautiful childhood despite her step-father's misgivings about bringing her up.