Obituary - Sir Fazle Hassan Abed KCMG

Obituary

Sir Fazle Hassan Abed KCMG

1936 - 2019

'My organisation is 100% non profit organisation, like I don't take no money from the profit, I don't own anything; still living in a rented accommodation.'' Fazle Hassan Abed 

told this to a journalist once. Perhaps this is called true philanthropy. an eminent gentleman whose social enterprise which turns over circa $700 million and the entrepreneur of that NGO does not have a house to his name. Which speaks volume about this  protagonist par excellence; who single handedly steered his aspiration to help the poor and finally turning his passion into forming  world's biggest Non Government Organisation. 

What it takes a United kingdom educated multinational Oil company executive to turn into a benevolent social entrepreneur is still a mystery to many? In 1970 erstwhile East Pakistan (present day Bangladesh) was devastated by a mammoth cyclone and a catastrophic tsunami. Hundreds of thousands of people in the coastal belt of the country lost  their lives, millions have lost their homes, cattle heads and crops. At that time, Mr Abed with few of his friends formed an organisation called HOPE to help those displaced people in Monpura Island in  the Bay of Bengal sea. I guess that was when the seed of helping the needy embedded in himself. Soon after the massacre of the 1970 cyclone the country faced tumultuous Liberation War in 1971. It was a genocide and a  Bengali Holocaust. Millions of people yet again got displaced and ended up as refugees in India. Mr. Abed moved back to the UK and started to internationalise the plight of the Bengali people in the hands of the occupying Pakistani Military junta and its apparatus. Raised funds, arranged medical supplies and many other chores to ease the hardship of the refugees and support the freedom fighters in their guerrilla warfare to gain the independence. 

Right after independence in 1972 his friend Mr. Vikrul Islam a prominent lawyer in the UK and Malaysia and him formed the BRAC [Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee] with the savings from Mr. Islam and Mr. Abed’s sales proceeds of his London flat circa £6000.00. His first project was  to rehabilitate the repatriated refugees from India in Sullah in rural Sunamgonj of greater Sylhet district. That was the beginning of this epic journey. In the low lying lands of sullah thousands refugees who came  back from India to find their dwellings are burned, looted, damaged by the perpetrators during the war. Mr. Abed started to rebuild those houses to make them habitable for those inhabitants. 

The long march to eradicate poverty, women empowerment, primary education, research on oral saline to control cholera and setting up artisan handicraft factory and retails outlet to generate their self sufficiency in the funding continued from those early days. Abed remained all through as the favourite Abed Bhai to all. 

His brainchild BRAC; slowly and gradually leap frogged by fanning out its operations to 11 countries. Employed more that 100,000 employees. This social entrepreneur reached the pinnacle of NGO sector.

Mr Abed was one of the  highest recipients of foreign and local awards for all his social entrepreneurship over the last 49 years. Yet he remained the most humble and down to earth gentleman. 

Brac has been very successful in; 

Health & Nutrition : In the year of 1971, one in every four children in Bangladesh died before their fifth birthday, mainly because of diarrhoea epidemic . To fight this BRAC introduced very simplified  Oral Rehydration Solution (ORS) and was able to teach it to every mother in the country. Child mortality(death)   reduced in great numbers and every  member of a house is able to make this easy  solution/saline  when their children fall ill.

Sanitation, Hygiene and Water : About  60,000 village water, sanitation and hygiene education was imparted to manage their own  services. Brac established water safety plans, installed deep tube wells, tested water quality and provided loans for tube well platform construction, which protects water sources from being contaminated. Arsenic and saline-prone areas are prioritised where alternative water technologies are implemented.

Since 2006 they  facilitated  circa 40  million people have access to a  toilets  and two million people have access to a safe to drink water source, many of whom live in hard to reach areas. Bangladesh saw 34 per cent in 1990 to 1 per cent in 2015 in area of open defecation.

BRAC early learning centres, pre-primary and primary schools give children left out of formal education a second chance at learning. In the last four years in Bangladesh, Brac enrolled over 1 million children in pre-primary schools and transitioned 99 per cent of those who completed into government schools.

Their  model establishes simple one room, one teacher schools in hard to reach communities – reducing the need for students to walk miles. With an average of 30 pupils per classroom, local female teachers use a child-centred approach to learning and deliver a tailored.The list of Brac’s activities goes on and on.

BRAC has utilised 40 years of expertise to design, test, and adapt loan and savings products to meet the unique needs of people living in poverty. BRAC’s micro finance activities work through a unique ‘credit-plus’ approach, addressing the specific needs of people such as rural women, youth and adolescents, landless poor, marginal farmers, migrant workers, urban poor, and small entrepreneurs. BRAC recognise the heterogeneity among the poor and carefully target and develop customised financial services that best meet their varying needs.

It is with a very heavy heart Bangla Post mourns the sudden death of this great philanthropist who was awarded with Knighthood by her the Majesty the Queen. However, We feel that, he should have been awarded with more befitting National Awards back home and a Nobel Prize for all his championing projects to elevate poverty, micro finance, education, water & hygiene. 

Sir Abed left behind a son and a daughter. 

This icon of greater  Sylhet district was born in Baniachong village in the district of Habigonj. 

Everyone’s famous Abed Bhai will be missed for ever. Our thoughts, prayers and doa for the bereaved family, their  friends and relatives. 

 Imran A. Chowdhury 

A writer and  a Columnist 

[source : Biography & Brac Website )