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Bangladesh Activities


Harvard South Asia Week, April 8-12

The India & South Asia Program at Harvard Kennedy School announces the Harvard South Asia week from April 8 to 12. Speakers include Cameron Munter, former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, Shyam Saran, Former Foreign Secretary to India, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Senior Correspondent and Associate Editor, Washington Post, Ashok Gadgil, University of California, Berkeley, and Robert Blake, U.S. Assistant Secretary, South and Central Asian Affairs.

SAI will cosponsor the lecture with Ashok Gadgil on ‘Solutions for the Bottom 2 Billion‘ as part of our Social Enterprise Seminar Series.

    Troublemakers: Entrepreneurial Approaches Against Corruption

    What does the “business” of corruption-fighting look like? What are the key challenges and how does one measure successes? Corruption is the top issue in emerging market economies — and transparency is the most potent tool available to combat corruption. In a video conference with thirteen sites in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka (see list below), Professor Karthik Ramanna of Harvard Business School described his recent work on how entrepreneurs in China, Russia, and India built organizations to combat corruption. These entrepreneurs have leveraged transparency in their anti-corruption businesses, although they differ in important ways in their reliance on the Internet, their use of anonymity, and their engagement with local political and cultural institutions.

     

    In China, Professor Ramanna talked about Caijing Magazine, which works within the Chinese elite to enforce accountability from a privileged near-insider position. Learn more about the case here. In Russia, Rospil.info is a crowd-sourced website that uses the anonymity of the internet to fearlessly enforce anti-corruption and whistleblowing with a much greater militancy. In just over a year, Rospil claims it has prevented $1.5 billion in bribes. Learn more about the case here. Finally, Profsesor Ramanna discussed the website ipaidabribe.com, based in India (though there are sites in several other countries). The website encourages people to report bribes they have paid or resisted paying.

    Common themes from these three examples include the use of transparency as a tool against corruption, the Internet as a key vehicle for this transparency, and the deployment of transparency is contextualized by political/cultural barriers.

    Professor Ramanna then opened the discussion to questions and input from participants on what entrepreneurial corruption-fighting in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka might look like.

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    Read the Harvard Gazette Coverage of this event.

     

    To follow the conversation on twitter, check out #SAItroublemakers.

    The participating sites included:

    Bangladesh:

    BRAC University, Dhaka

    Pakistan:

    Foundation for Advancement of Science and Technology (FAST), Lahore

    Higher Education Commission (HEC), Islamabad

    Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Lahore

    Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi

    College of Business Management (CBM), Karachi

    University of Gujrat, Gujrat

    COMSATS Institute of Science and Technology (CIIT), Lahore

    University of Agriculture, Faisalabad

    Karachi School for Business & Leadership (KSBL), Karachi

    QuaId-i-Azam University (QAU), Islamabad

    Forman Christian College University (FCCU), Lahore

    Sri Lanka:

    American Center, Colombo

     

     

     

     

     

      Invitation and Call for Papers

      International Seminar on the Environment – Development Relationship in Bangladesh

      Saturday, April 13, 2013 from 9 AM – 5 PM

      Tsai Auditorium, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge MA

       

      This event will explore how the development partners can more effectively assist countries like Bangladesh in their leap into the middle income status. Also how to enhance the role of international community in this endeavor will come up for discussion in the seminar. The organizing committee requests for your  attendance and welcomes papers dealing with all aspects of environment-development in the context of South Asia including a wide variety of topics like natural disasters, climate and weather, water sharing, public health, climate change refugees, government policies and the role of international organizations and development partners.

       

      To register or submit a paper, please contact Mohammed Iqbal Yousuf, Co-ordinator (E-mail:  mohammed_yousuf@dfci.harvard.edu or call 617-416-9036)

       Organized by South Asian students and professionals at the Harvard Medical School, Harvard Law School, and Harvard College

      Co-sponsored by the South Asia Institute at Harvard University

        HSPH students in Bangladesh

        On January 19th, SAI and Independent University of Bangladesh (IUB) co-hosted an afternoon tea to introduce visiting Harvard School of Public Health students to Harvard alumni and local leaders in development and education.  The students shared their reflections on a very busy visit, which had included a few trips into rural Bangladesh for fun and to see some of the projects contributing to the country’s impressive gains in public health in recent years.

        Local participants in the event included Professor Omar Rahman, Vice Chancellor of IUB and leader of the local HAA chapter, Ms. Nasim Ferdous, Executive Director of the Bangladesh Alliance for Women Leadership, Mr. Mosharraf Hossain, Country Director of Action on Disability and Development International, and Professor Fahima Aziz, Vice Chancellor of the Asian University for Women in Chittagong.  Several recent alumni, including Mridul Chowdhury and Rubayat Khan (HKS), also attended.

          TiE Delhi-NCR and Omidyar Network Host Affordable Healthcare Summit

          November 30, 2012 – Speakers include David Bangsberg, Director of International Programs at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Director of the International Program for the Harvard University Center for AIDS Research and Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Global Health, Asif Saleh, Senior Director of Strategy, Communications and Capacity Division at SAI’s partner BRAC and BRAC International, and Maria May, Program Consultant, SAI Dhaka. Learn more here.

            BYLC Leadership Workshop Graduation Ceremony – Dhaka

            Participants of a three-day national workshop on leadership developed and offered by Bangladesh Youth Leadership Center (BYLC), the country’s first leadership institute, and supported by the Canadian High Commission in Bangladesh, were awarded certificates at a graduation reception held at the Canadian High Commissioner’s official residence on Saturday, November 24, 2012. The event was organized by Harvard Kennedy School Alum Ejaj Ahmad. Click here for more.

             

              Anwarul Quadir Foundation To Fund Student Internships in Bangladesh

              SAI is pleased to announce that the Anwarul Quadir Foundation will support Fellowships for two Harvard students to travel each year to Bangladesh to intern at established business in Dhaka, to promote understanding in the Harvard community of the social and entrepreneurial progress in Bangladesh.

                SAI Participates in Global Symposium on Health Systems Research, Beijing

                Last week, SAI Regional Coordinator Maria May was one of 1,800 participants in the second Global Symposium on Health Systems Research held in Beijing, China.  Much of the conversation centered on achieving universal health coverage, and both Bangladesh and India were highlighted for progress and innovation towards achieving this goal.  Several Harvard faculty, including Drs. Peter Berman, Richard Cash, and Bill Hsiao presented on their research.  One evening, the Harvard School of Public Health sponsored a alumni and faculty reception that approximately twenty people attended.  Maria presented a poster on BRAC’s combination approach to community health workers.  BRAC University was one of the co-sponsors of the event.

                Learn more about the conference here:
                http://www.hsr-symposium.org/

                  Attention Organizations in South Asia!

                  Are you interested in providing an internship opportunity for a Harvard student?

                  Please considering becoming a SAI partnered organization to offer summer internships to Harvard undergraduate and graduate students. Organizations in various sectors, (health, government, education, microfinance, social enterprise, etc.) are welcome to fill out this survey. SAI will advertise these opportunities on our website, newsletter, and through outreach events on Harvard’s campus.

                  Please contact us if you have questions about the SAI Internship program!

                    BRAC and SAI Form Partnership

                    To further its presence in Bangladesh, Harvard’s South Asia Initiative is working with BRAC, a Bangladeshi organization recognized as a leader the world efforts to alleviate poverty.
                    BRAC provides SAI with information from the frontlines, keeping it up-to-date on emerging issues and local dialog. In addition, the partnership facilitates connections between local organizations and Harvard students and faculty. BRAC organizes many events to catalyze exchange and bilateral learning between the Harvard community and Bangladesh.

                      Harvard Alumni Meet in Dhaka, March 2012

                      In early March, members of Dhaka’s Harvard community met at the Alliance Francaise de Dhaka. Shazzad Hoshen Khan, an emerging Bengali artist, was present to discuss his work on exhibition. Attendants included Ms. Ferdous Begum, former Director General for Bangladesh TV and several alumni working in development.

                      At left: Ms. Ferdous Ara Begum, HKS alumna, with her niece, joined Maria May, Harvard FAS alumna and SAI Coordinator, and Alayne Adams, HSPH alumna at the Alliance Francaise de Dhaka.

                        SAI At Harvard Alumni Club Event in Dhaka

                        SAI Associate Director Meena Hewett traveled to Bangladesh in January, 2012. She spoke at a Harvard Alumni Club Event on Friday, January 20, 2012, along with the Chief Guest of the gathering, Dr. Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury, Bir Bikram, Advisor to the Honourable Prime Minister.

                        The Daily News, Bangladesh, published this brief of the account, which was also covered on local television.

                        Meena Hewett addresses the audience at Independent University.