Clinton award for Bangladesh social worker

DHAKA: Noted Bangladeshi social worker Fazle Hasan Abed will be honoured by former US president Bill Clinton with the first Clinton Global Citizenship Award at a ceremony in New York on Sep 27.

Abed is the founder-chairperson of BRAC (formerly Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee), United News of Bangladesh (UNB) news agency said on Thursday.

In his letter to Abed, Clinton said the award recognises extraordinary people who are making a major difference with their efforts to help others. "Your remarkable efforts inspire so many people around the world," he wrote.

Abed was "selected after a rigorous process that included reviewing hundreds of exemplary citizens who have demonstrated visionary leadership in alleviating some of our world's most pressing challenges", Clinton added.

In the aftermath of the liberation war in 1971, Abed started BRAC to rehabilitate returning refugees in a remote area in a northeastern district of Bangladesh.

BRAC now works in more than 68,000 villages in Bangladesh helping over 100 million poor people in the fields of income generation, health care, population control, primary education for children and the like. In 2002, BRAC went international.

Abed has bagged a number of awards, including the Ramon Magasaysay Award for Community Leadership, Unicef's Maurice Pate Award, the Olof Palme Prize, Schwab Foundation's Social Entrepreneurship Award, the Gates Award for Global Health, UNDP's Mahbub-ul-Haq Award for Outstanding Contribution in Human Development and the Henry R. Kravis Prize in Leadership.