BSS-25 BRAC founder Fazle Hasan Abed passes away

738

ZCZC

BSS-25

OBIT-ABED LEAD

BRAC founder Fazle Hasan Abed passes away

DHAKA, Dec 20, 2019 (BSS) – Founder and Chair Emeritus of BRAC Sir Fazle Hasan Abed died of a brain tumor at a hospital in the city tonight.

He breathed his last at 8.28pm while undergoing treatment at Apollo Hospitals in Baridhara area, BRAC executive director Asif Saleh told BSS.

He was 83.

Abed left behind his wife, a daughter, a son and a host of relatives and admirers to mourn his death.

On December 22, the body of Abed will be kept at the Army Stadium from 10.30am to 12.30pm to allow the people of all walks of life to pay their last tributes to him. A namaz-e-janaza will be held at the stadium at 12.30pm.

Later, he will be laid to eternal rest at the Banani graveyard here, according to a press release of BRAC.

Bangladesh-based BRAC is one of the world’s largest non-governmental organization. Sir Fazle Hasan Abed was born on April 27 in 1936 in Baniachang village of Habiganj district. Fazle’s a paternal grandfather Nawab Justice Sir Syed Shamsul Huda served the executive committee of the Bengal Presidency Governor as its member. He was among the chief initiators of the University of Dhaka.

Abed went to several schools, firstly Habiganj Government High School, then Cumilla Zilla School, and finally Pabna Zilla School, from where he passed his matriculation in 1952.

He passed higher secondary examinations from Dhaka College in 1954. He took admission in the University of Dhaka to study honours in physics, but did not complete, and moved to England. There he studied naval architecture at the University of Glasgow in Scotland for two years but left the department to study accounting. Sir Abed completed cost and management accounting in 1962.

He returned to Bangladesh (the then East Pakistan) in 1968. Abed joined Shell Oil in 1970 as the head of finance and was posted in Chattogram.

After a deadly cyclone hit the coast on 12 November 1970, claiming at least 300 thousand lives, Sir Fazle, along with friends and colleagues, travelled to Monpura, one of the worst hit remote islands, to distribute relief. Later, they formed an organisation called HELP to continue the relief operations.

When the Liberation War broke out in 1971, Abed resigned from Shell Oil and moved back to London to campaign for the independence of Bangladesh. Campaign for independence Sir Fazle arrived in London in May 1971.

He founded two organisations; Help Bangladesh and Action Bangladesh, along with a number of like-minded people, to campaign for the independence of Bangladesh.

In 1972, Sir Fazle Abed returned to independent Bangladesh. Before returning, he sold his small London flat to initially fund the relief work he was about to undertake for the refugees coming back from India. He established Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee (BRAC) and began relief and rehabilitation work in Sulla and Dirai upazilas of Sunamganj.

On February 1 in 1972, the first phase of BRAC’s intervention in Sulla commenced. Hence it is the official date of BRAC’s establishment.

In 1973, BRAC began providing microloans. Sir Fazle was one of the earliest proponents of microfinance in Bangladesh. His aim was to help poor communities overcome poverty through microloans. Later on, BRAC also pioneered the ‘graduation approach’, a model for assisting people to sustainably overcome extreme poverty.

The effectiveness of this model was proved in studies by renowned institutions, and has been scaled up in over 40 countries as of 2019.

Over the course of its five decades of operations, BRAC invented many successful community-driven social and economic empowerment models to sustainably fight poverty and extreme poverty across continents.

BRAC began international operations in 2002 in Afghanistan and now runs development programmes in 11 countries in Asia and Africa, including Bangladesh.

BRAC was ranked the world’s number one NGO for four years in a row, from 2016 to 2019, by NGO Advisor, a Geneva-based independent media entity, for its innovative, cost-effective and evidence-based programmes.

Abed led BRAC as its executive director from 1972-2001. He then assumed the position of chairperson and held it till 2019, retiring on 1 August 2019 to become its chairperson emeritus.

Sir Fazle Hasan Abed founded BRAC University in 2001. He served as the chairman of its board of trustees from its founding year till 2019, retiring on July 24, 2019.

Sir Fazle also founded BRAC Bank in 2001. He was its chairperson in two phases, from 2001-2008, and from 2013-2019, retiring on August 26, 2019.

Sir Fazle Hasan Abed received numerous national and international awards and recognition for his pioneering role in many frontiers of socio-economic development in Bangladesh and outside.

The awards and recognition included ‘Knighthood’ from the Crown of England in recognition of services in reducing poverty in Bangladesh and internationally (2009), Yidan Prize, one of the highest international honours for promotion of education, from Hong Kong-based Yidan Prize Foundation (2019), Royal Knighthood from King Willem Alexander of the Netherlands (2019), the Jose Edgardo Campos Collaborative Leadership Award from the Global Leadership Forum and World Bank Group, Washington DC (2016), World Food Prize for outstanding contribution in the agriculture and food sector (2015), Leo Tolstoy International Gold Medal from the Russian Children’s Fund (2014), Spanish Order of Civil Merit for efforts in tackling poverty and empowering people living in poverty (2014), WISE Prize, one of the highest international honours for promotion of education, from the Qatar Foundation (2011), David Rockefeller Bridging Leadership Award (2008), Clinton Global Citizenship Award (2007) and Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership (1980).

The then UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon named Abed as one of the most significant personalities of the developing nations (2010).

Awards and recognitions Fazle Abed brought for BRAC are Swadhinata Dibash Award, the highest civilian honour awarded by the Bangladesh government (2007), Conrad N Hilton Humanitarian Prize, world’s largest annual humanitarian award (2008), Alan Shawn Feinstein World Hunger Award (1990) from Brown University in USA, UNICEF Maurice Pate Award (1992) and UNESCO Noma Prize, for meritorious work in literacy (1985).

BSS/MSH/MKD/MMA/2246hrs