Korvi Rakshand
Founder of JAAGO Foundation

As the eldest son, Korvi Rakshand had been groomed his entire life to join the family company. Despite the many opportunities afforded him, Korvi carved himself a future his family did not support.

While on a working tour of the country, Korvi ended up spending a day with street children in Sylhet. “I spent the whole day with them, playing games, listening to their life stories,” Korvi remembers. “I bought them lunch, and later on chocolates and colour pencils. As the day came to an end, and I got up to leave, a young girl, about 11-years-old, grabbed my hand. She looked up at me and explained that she had no family or anyone to take care of her. Then she asked me if I would be her father. It was a life changing moment for me. Never before had I actually given thought to how lucky I was to grow up in a safe home environment. It made me want to do something for all the poor children in Bangladesh.”

With some of his friends, Korvi rented a small room in a slum in Rayer Bazar, a relatively poor neighbourhood in the capital. With 17 neighbourhood children, one rug, a white board and a few markers, Korvi Rakshand began a school.

Initially, the students were given rice in exchange for coming to school, in a basic 'Food for Education' model. However, soon Korvi was faced with losing the school. With almost no funds, Korvi struggled to pay the rent on the small room, and simultaneously provide stipends to the students.

After the landlord threatened to shut down the school if Korvi didn't pay rent, one of the students came to him and offered to give up her promised stipend so the school wouldn't be shut down. Korvi, touched by the gesture, kindly reminded her that one student's stipend was insignificant in the long-run. The girl suggested that if Korvi promised to keep running the school, the students would promise to make sure that their families agreed to stop receiving stipends. Thankfully, Korvi was able to keep the school running and keep his promise.

Korvi's family, aware of his volunteer work, watched indifferently. When his dedication and determination grew, they demanded that he put aside the school and join the family company. Korvi made the hardest decision of his life and walked out on his family to continue what he believed was more important.

On his first day away from home, Korvi received a meal from the family of one of his students. In the days that followed, Korvi continued to receive generous offerings from the community. “I was reminded of that little girl in Sylhet,” says Korvi. “Like her, I suddenly had nowhere to go, and no one to look after me. Then, this community adopted me. It meant even more to me because I knew that they were struggling to make ends meet, and they wanted to help me despite their own hardships.”

As time went on, Korvi worked to establish numerous projects to help sustain the school. The Sponsorship Program, where every child has one sponsor who pays for their schooling, helped to balance the costs of running the school.

The JAAGO Sewing Centre currently works to train women of the community in sewing and tailoring, and provides them with job options with the centre after they complete their training. A candle factory was established to help those people who were unable to work at the sewing centre due to poor eye sight. These projects created job opportunities, enabling JAAGO to keep their students' families from moving away due to lack of employment.

JAAGO Foundation launched an annual campaign to raise awareness about universal children's rights. Volunteers took to the streets, switching lives with the poor street children of Dhaka. While the volunteers raise awareness about Universal Children's Day, the street children spend an entire day having fun at a local theme park Wonderland. The children are entertained, fed and given health check-ups. They even receive an average estimate of their daily wages, so that they are not mistreated for taking the day off. Launched in 2009, the campaign started with 500 volunteers and 500 street children. Raising 4.73 lakh taka, JAAGO was able to establish two new classrooms. The next year, 2,000 volunteers and 1,000 street children were involved. The staggering 24 lakh taka raised, contributed towards two new schools in Karail and Tongi. In 2011, the campaign had 7,000 volunteers globally and more than 1,000 street children nationwide.

Today, the JAAGO Foundation free-of-cost school has 3 branches, with 600 students, and thousands of beneficiaries, and the numbers are growing every day. Korvi continues to work for the empowerment of street children and communities that were once neglected and ignored.

“People call it charity,” says Korvi Rakshand. “I call it responsibility.”

Compiled by Star Correspondent

Shahana Siddiqui & Israfil Khosru
Founders of thebangladeshi.org, Politics and Policy Research

There are articles after articles against the political leadership of Bangladesh. A real cry for new, fresh blood who will lead the people to the next step of national development and progress. Is corruption the only way out for us? Where are the educated young enthusiasts who can join the politics, and make a change? Can new politics overcome the class divide, the geographical divisions, the split in national interest?

The world is changing and so is Bangladesh. There is a real need for the youth to be politically motivated that is beyond partisanship, personal gains and street level violence. In the midst of blame games, the real interest of the country, the feeling of nationalism was lost. An entire generation has been raised with political apathy, believing things will remain the same. There is a real frustration among the youth to have a viable platform to raise their concerns, hopes, dreams, and aspirations that will transform into political policies, changes.

Israfil Khosru and Shahana Siddiqui are dedicated in making that thirst for political change a reality. Together they initiated the first political research group called The Bangladeshi (www.thebangladeshi.org) that aims to bring Bangladeshis together to generate interests of national concerns among the youth of Bangladesh. Old school friends with education from abroad, they came back to make a difference in their country of origin. Israfil, along with developing The Bangladeshi, is a young entrepreneur, with keen interests in national politics. Shahana is a dedicated development practitioner with years of field experience. She writes as she feels, creating a strong readership around her political and social writings. Together, they believe that politics can again be an art of wits, intelligence and passion. The young generation deserves a political space, a platform to be heard from and the Bangladeshi gives them exactly that opportunity. Their political research and analyses are based on the needs and demands of the youth of Bangladesh, irrespective of race, class, gender, ethnicity divides. The Bangladeshi is about making Bangladeshi nationalism alive again.

Compiled by Star Correspondent

Ejaj Ahmad
Founder of BYLC, Bangladesh's First Leadership Institute

Ejaj Ahmad, founder of Bangladesh Youth Leadership Center (BYLC), is one of Asia's talented young leaders. His roots in public service go back to his school days in Dhaka when he was an active debater and community organiser. After high school, Ejaj left for Scotland to earn his first degree in economics from St. Andrews. There his studies focused on econometrics, macroeconomics and development economics, and he returned to Bangladesh in 2003 to develop a career as an economist. While working on different projects for the World Bank and UNDP, Ejaj had the opportunity to interact with senior civil servants, bankers, business chamber and civil society leaders. It was during this time that he had the powerful realisation that the main challenge in Bangladesh is not about money, but about leadership. Bangladesh needs a new generation of competent and compassionate leaders to take the country forward.

Ejaj wanted to do something to change the quality of leadership in Bangladesh, but at the age of 24, he neither had the money nor the courage to start an organisation. Therefore, he chose to study leadership at Harvard for two years under world renowned professors of leadership and developed the business plan and curriculum of a leadership program under the guidance of his supervisor Ronald Heifetz, a world authority on leadership and founder of Harvard's Center for Public Leadership. After his Masters in Public Policy in 2008, Ejaj had $10,000 to materialise his dream. He and his partner, Shammi Quddus, then an engineering student at MIT, received the fund from winning the 2008 Davis Peace Prize. They invested the money to launch a month-long pilot leadership program in Chittagong with 30 students, drawn in equal proportion from English, Bangla and Madrassa educational systems. The pilot was a success, but Ejaj had to start over again from zero, with nothing but a heart full of hope and a brochure from the pilot. While many of his Harvard classmates were pursuing lucrative careers in the West, he spent the first three years working from a small room in his father's apartment.

“Everyone with a degree from Harvard wants to change the world, but often what gets in the way is the pursuit of security, a stable job with a steady paycheck. Then there is the hope to make the first million, after the first million, the next million. I refused to follow that path. I wanted to pursue my dream of changing my country right after finishing my education. And that's why I began my journey without thinking too much about security.”

BYLC's signature leadership program, Building Bridges through Leadership Training (BBLT), trains the participants in three stages: building bridges, leadership training and community service. BYLC unites youth from the three different educational systems to promote a more inclusive and tolerant narrative in society. The program's innovative curriculum takes a practical approach towards understanding and exercising leadership. Ejaj uses case-in-point teaching to illustrate concepts of leadership, engaging the participants in the process. Finally, community service allows students to research, run experiments, make mistakes and make mid-course corrections before implementing small, scalable projects in the community.

Using a combination of classroom lectures, case studies, small group consultations, reflection exercises and experiential learning, students at BYLC develop their ability to effectively observe the environment they are in, to interpret the raw data that they see and hear, and to make productive interventions in the system.

Each new program at the institute attracts a wider range of youth than the last, and the best are selected from the diverse pool. The last BBLT program had an acceptance rate of less than 6%. The high selectivity of the programs ensures that BYLC trains the brightest of the young generation, as the breadth and depth of intellect matters in exercising leadership in the 21st century. BBLT graduates are now thriving in most youth organisations, using their training to take the work a step further. Ovick Alam, a BBLT graduate, is the founder of Bridgewee, a specialised school for preparing English-medium students for Dhaka University entrance exams, and Amiya Atahar, another BBLT graduate, is the head of the youth-led organisation One Degree Initiative. These are just two examples. There are many other BBLT graduates who are taking their own initiatives to lead change in society.

BYLC has grown fast over the past three and half years. The leadership institute today has its own 5200 sq. ft. training centre in Baridhara. BYLC has over 400 graduates from 11 different programs, and collectively they have completed more than 18,000 hours of service in underprivileged communities. Its innovative model is recognised by, amongst others, BRAC, the private sector in Bangladesh, the Asia Society, the International Youth Foundation, the U.S. State Department and the World Bank Group. BYLC also successfully organised Bangladesh's first Youth Leadership Summit in March 2011, and will host its second Summit in April 2012 with 50 speakers and 450 delegates selected competitively from all over Bangladesh.

Compiled by Star Correspondent