IN THIS ISSUE

China Internships Open New Doors

By Mariah Steele

For many of us, the shirts on our backs do not inspire much reflection. If we stop to examine how many people in how many different places helped to make our shirts, however, we begin to uncover a fascinating and complex global process that affects businesses, workers, the environment, and economic development. As interns at the Esquel Group in Foshan City, China, two AUW students, Fayeka Zabeen and Shamima Nasrin Rima, both from Bangladesh, had the remarkable opportunity to explore all of these issues while simultaneously developing their own professional skills.

Esquel Group, according to its website, is “one of the world’s leading producers of premium cotton shirts,” known for manufacturing “respected brands such as Tommy Hilfiger, Hugo Boss, Brooks Brothers, Abercrombie & Fitch, Nike, Lands’ End and Muji.” With production facilities in China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Mauritius, and Sri Lanka, Esquel’s “vertically integrated operations” cover every step of the production process from growing cotton to selling finished shirts. Esquel emphasizes “ethical business practices” by “reducing its environmental footprint and creating good workplace conditions,” and is known for supporting schools and education in the communities where it operates.

AUW’s unique curriculum requires students to complete three internships—one non-profit, one for-profit, and one entrepreneurial organization—during their five years at AUW. Ms. Dee Poon, a member of AUW’s International Council of Advisors and Director of YL Yang Esquel Education Foundation, arranged for these internships. The objective was to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of “how a ‘vertically integrated business functions’ and to get broad exposure to the processes of a manufacturing base.”

Thus, when Fayeka and Shamima saw the advertisement for a four-week-long, fully funded internship with Esquel Group, they were thrilled, sensing an opportunity to develop their professional skills while learning the inner workings of a top-notch international business. Fayeka, whose father worked in the garment industry as a textile designer and printer, described her interest in the organization in her application: “I would love to learn about advanced technology and business strategy in order to utilize the knowledge in my future career, so that we can… turn our human deprivation into human development…” Similarly, Shamima wrote, “I always wanted to study fashion designing and manufacturing… It has been my dream to work in an international company and also to work in a foreign country.”

As interns in Esquel’s Human Resources Department, Fayeka and Shamima were exposed to the strict hours and etiquette of office life at a global business. They prepared Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides for reports, helped design posters and English language tests for new employees, and conducted research. While Shamima felt like “a professional” and enjoyed knowing that her colleagues were “pleased with our performances,” Fayeka left disappointed because visa delays cut her internship short at three weeks.

Although the language difference was a challenge at times for Fayeka and Shamima, the young women’s English skills allowed them to make friends and give back to the community. Esquel had lined up a local teacher to teach the summer interns English, but Shamima’s and Fayeka’s English was so impressive that Esquel asked the two girls to teach the interns instead. Shamima asserts that working with the other interns taught them about Chinese culture and the forming of cross-cultural friendships. “There were 22 of them and when we were leaving they gave us two notebooks, where they have [written] many ‘thank you’ and ‘best wishes’ notes. I was really impressed with their behavior,” Shamima says.

Food presented another challenge that Fayeka and Shamima overcame with the help of their Chinese co-workers and friends. As Muslims, the two young women are forbidden to eat pork, but most of the local food included pork or pork oil. Happily, the girls’ mentors helped them order special food and brought them to traditional restaurants with non-pork options. Co-workers also took the young women on shopping and sight-seeing trips. Fayeka was struck by the differences between Foshan City and her hometown, Chittagong, including how the Chinese move around “freely and safely” even late at night, while people in Chittagong often stay inside after 10:00 p.m.

In many ways, the cultural experience of living in China expanded the young women’s skills, confidence, and experience more than office work alone ever could. As Fayeka says, “This internship not only [increased] my work experience but also helped me to adjust to new people, food, language, and culture… I am planning to utilize my every vacation like this.” Shamima concurs: “I had an incredible experience and I am waiting for another internship offer. If not [through] AUW, then I will apply on my own.”

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Inaugural Access Academy Class Graduates
in Emotional Ceremony

By Nicole Santa Maria

The inaugural class of Access Academy celebrated its graduation at a local hotel in Chittagong on July 8, 2009. The occasion marked the end of 16 months of rigorous preparation for the undergraduate program at the Asian University for Women (AUW). The graduation ceremony honored the students’ achievement as well as provided an opportunity for students, teachers, and administrators to express their gratitude to those who contributed to the success of the very first year of Access Academy.

In her welcome speech, Dr. Hoon Eng Khoo, Acting Vice-Chancellor and Provost of AUW, recounted the achievements of the students.

Dr. Khoo cited several examples where young women who came to the Access Academy with only basic English skills progressed so much during their first year that they were able to go to places such as Dubai and Tokyo and speak confidently about their lives and ambitions to large groups of people.

Afterwards, Dr. Khoo read the messages of two people who, regrettably, could not attend: Mr. Jack Meyer, Chairman of the Board of the AUW Support Foundation (AUWSF), and Mr. Kamal Ahmad, President and CEO of AUWSF, and the founder of AUW. Mr. Meyer encouraged the girls to continue being pioneers by quoting the American poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Meanwhile, Mr. Ahmad thanked the students for their courage and persistence; the students’ parents, who trusted AUW to educate their daughters; and the Access Academy teachers for their “relentless hard work and for the love they carried… for all the souls that made this program possible.”

Economist and international human rights expert Ms. Salma Khan was the keynote speaker at the event. Ms. Khan currently serves as President for the organization Women for Women. She is also the Chairperson and Project Coordinator of Coalition of Beijing Plus Five, a coalition of over 624 NGOs committed to establishing human rights for Bangladeshi women. She said to the graduating students: “You represent the model of aspiring women… By joining the Asian University for Women, you have decided to [contribute to the advancement]… of women in Asia in the face of all odds. The education you are receiving here provides you a critical pathway to leadership development to transform your families, communities, and societies.”

Following Ms. Khan’s speech, Ms. Zarina Hossain, Interim Dean of the Access Academy, observed that despite the emphasis placed on academic and residential space, “A building is just a building,” and that it was the people that made the school come alive. Together with Mr. Omar Shareef, AUW’s Director of Operations, and Dr. Khoo, Ms. Hossain recognized the WorldTeach volunteers who had dedicated the past 16 months to teaching the students English, computer skills, logical reasoning, and critical thinking skills, while helping them to become more self-assured.

Members of the student government then came forward to make a presentation for their teachers—a slideshow using pictures of their teachers taken throughout the year and a half of the Access Academy program. The slideshow was accompanied by the song, “You Raise Me Up,” which included a phrase that captured how the students felt about their teachers: “You raise me up to more than I can be.” At this point in the ceremony, members of the Graduation Planning Committee went up and down the aisles distributing tissues to tearful students, teachers, and audience members.

The teachers had also prepared something for their students. They came in pairs to talk about the qualities they recognized in their students: humor, courage, integrity, and strength. Access Academy teacher Ms. Amy Lam spoke passionately about how the students should stand up to anyone who calls them weak, and to say, “I am an Asian woman, and I make dreams come true.”

Finally, it was time for the presentation of the diplomas. The 129 young students, who came from Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, lined up to receive certification of their completion of the Access Academy. Resplendent in their saris, shalwar kameez, and other native costumes, the students came on stage to receive their diplomas from Dr. Khoo and AUW embroidered silk scarves from Dr. Dil Afroze Qader, the first Executive Director of Access Academy.

To conclude the graduation ceremony, there was a “handing over” ceremony where Access Academy teachers “entrusted” their students to the AUW faculty by presenting them with a small banyan tree, a symbol of knowledge and wisdom. The new faculty pledged to nurture the minds of the inaugural class of Access Academy students, who would now be under their care as the first batch of undergraduate students at AUW.

Ms. Annie Hsu, Chief of Staff in the Office of the Provost and Head of the Graduation Ceremony Planning Committee, was pleased with the ceremony and with the achievements of the students and teachers. She said, “The graduation ceremony was beautiful. It was certainly an intensely emotional day. Students expressed their heartfelt gratitude to their beloved teachers, who poured their hearts and souls into teaching and mentoring the students. The ceremony was both a celebratory conclusion to the students’ Access Academy education and the commencement of a new chapter in their AUW lives.

A big thank you to all AUW staff who made this program a success!”

Note: Of the 129 students who graduated from the Access Academy, 128 have returned to Chittagong to begin their first year in the undergraduate program.

Growing Through Conflict and Creating Hope

AUW's Sri Lankan students walk in one another’s shoes. By Mariah Steele

On September 23, 2009, when all of AUW's Sri Lankan students—both Sinhalese and Tamil—gathered together with counselor Evangeline “Evan” Ekanayake for a workshop, they did not realize they were about to reach a turning point in their lives. In the weeks beforehand, the students had busily prepared for this day, making budgets, shopping for food, setting up projectors, and planning lists of music. Amidst the buzz and excitement, however, a deeper level of preparation was taking place: friendships were being built through the shared tasks of finding recipes, ingredients, and songbooks. The two groups’ led discussions with each other and their friends about the importance of honesty, asking hard questions such as “How deep should we go?” “What questions can we ask?” “How can we ask them without hurting anyone but still be honest?” Even Evan, also from Sri Lanka, recalls that she “had to put myself through the emotional gymnastics of feeling the pain of both sides before I became authentic enough to dare to speak.” However difficult, all of these preparations were necessary in order to begin an open dialogue between Sinhalese and Tamil students after 26 years of an ethnic conflict that is presumed to have killed at least 100,000 people and displaced one million others.

Ethnic tensions between the majority Sinhalese (74% of the population and predominantly Buddhist) and minority Tamils (18% of the population and predominantly Hindu)1 escalated into armed conflict in Sri Lanka—an island nation with a population of over 20 million. In 1956, Sinhalese nationalists came to power after 450 years of European colonization and decreed Sinhala the only national language. Discrimination against Tamils in employment, land ownership, university admissions, and daily life became common. Some Tamil leaders in the 1970s began to resort to violence to make their voices heard, calling for the formation of a “Tamil homeland” in the island’s north. From the 1980s onward, both sides of the conflict—the Sri Lankan army and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Tamil separatist group—conducted gruesome attacks affecting civilians and fighters alike. Apart from the more traditional fighting between soldiers, Sinhalese and Tamil citizens faced machine-gun attacks on busses, bombings on trains and in stations, the detonation of grenades in public squares, the explosion of landmines on roads and farms, and the assassination of dozens of political leaders.2

The recent escalation and “end” of the armed conflict epitomizes the complexity of this war. In May 2009, the Sri Lankan government declared victory after a full-scale war against the LTTE in which many of the LTTE’s top leaders and cadres were killed. Whether the ethnic conflict is actually over, however, remains to be seen. Many claim that both sides perpetrated massive human rights violations during the last battle: the LTTE is accused of trapping thousands of civilians on a narrow strip of land and using them as a “human shield” against the Sri Lankan army.3 Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan army is accused of a number of war crimes, including refusing to provide a cease-fire to allow trapped civilians to escape. Currently, more than 200,000 Tamil refugees live in camps that remind some of prisoner-of-war camps. While the government claims it is restricting the refugees’ resettlement in order to find missing LTTE fighters in the civilians’ midst, locals and international diplomats fear that the government’s failure to help resettle the refugees, plus the injustice and squalid nature of the camps, will only further fan the flames of resentment that could lead to future conflict. Because international observers are still prevented from entering the war zone, the outside world cannot know for sure what is happening on the ground. 4

One’s experience of the war varies greatly depending on where one lives in Sri Lanka. Some Tamil students grew up in the war zone around the northern city of Jaffna and endured frequent shelling, dislocation, and the deaths of friends and family members. Some Sinhalese students escaped bomb blasts in commercial centers by a matter of minutes or lost loved ones in the fighting. A number of AUW students grew up going to school and work alongside both Tamils and Sinhalese, while for others, AUW marks the first time they have lived in close proximity to people from the other culture. When the war “ended” in May, some Sinhalese students wished to express their relief and join in national celebration, while Tamil students were left coping with grief.

At the time, Access Academy teachers noticed the tension that these divergent feelings produced between the Sinhalese and Tamil students and asked Evan for advice. In addition to explaining the complex history of the conflict to the teachers, Evan saw an opportunity for individual growth and healing for the Sri Lankan students. As Evan explains, rather than “just sitting on these noxious problems,” she wanted to “provide a space for grief and healing for our Tamil students, and use the opportunity to create a sensitive understanding among our Sinhalese students. Our girls had learned what helplessness in the face of war was like and had developed the ‘what-to-do’ helpless attitude common back at home. They had to know that wars began in the minds of men and women. That they were first fought not on battlefields but in kitchens, backyards, fields, offices, and classrooms with the weapons of bias, prejudice, and indifference. They had to know that wars did not end when guns were silent but when people had the courage to confront their own injustices, and others’ pain; when we as communities had the strength to rethink what we had been taught about each other, to re-examine our histories and to re-design our futures.”

Evan also recognized that the Sri Lankan students’ experiences represented a chance to explore how AUW can address the larger issue of violence in Asia. She says: “This is not just about Sri Lanka and her wars, but about a wider, more deeply rooted character of violence that affects millions of women across many battle-scarred Asian countries. Many of our other students have also suffered conflict or violence in their homes, their streets, and their communities and war in their countries… There is a huge discrepancy between what we at AUW are asking our students to become—self-sufficient, confident, open-minded women—and what their home societies are expecting them to be. AUW needs to address this gap.”

To these ends, Evan developed the “Growing Through Conflict” workshop in which the Sri Lankan students at AUW discussed how conflict can escalate to violence and then war, how cultural attitudes can encourage violence, and what it means to be a Sri Lankan woman. The group also read aloud case stories about young women affected by loss and ethnic violence around the world and shared their responses. Evan hoped these activities would help the group “go beyond rhetoric and cliché to let fresh attitudes move us to powerful actions that will prevent the rebirth of war.” After four hours of talking, sharing, and thinking, the young women cooked traditional Sri Lankan Kottu together, sang bilingual “baila” songs in both Tamil and Sinhala, and danced until close to midnight.

For several students, the most compelling part of the experience occurred when Evan urged them all to imagine truly walking in one another’s shoes. She posed a series of tough questions to each group:

“If you are Sinhalese, can you try to imagine what it is like not to be able to freely use your own language in your own country, to be treated like a suspect wherever you go, to feel over and over again that your own country does not want you?… If you are Tamil, have you ever thought what it must be like for [the Sinhalese] to feel there is no other place on Earth they can call home, no place which recognizes their language, no other space apart from this 370-by-150 mile island that they can own, while Tamils have India and the support of many Western countries?” Shanika, a student participant, reports that after each of these piercing questions, “Ms. Evan would say

‘If you have never thought about it, think now.’ And our minds would be working and the room was silent.”

The chance to imagine oneself in the other group’s situation prompted much internal reflection. One Tamil student writes, “I felt really sorry when I heard that Sinhala is a minor language worldwide. Sri Lanka is the only country where many people are speaking Sinhala. But… many Indians are speaking Tamil and… [so are people] in many European countries.” Shanika concurs: “The way I think about war is now different. Both parties have goods and bads. We have differences but that doesn’t mean we have to fight.”

Although Mahilini, also a participant, feared that emotions might overtake some students during the workshop, she learned that “their patience was incredible.” Indeed, the sharing of stories helped everyone understand the suffering of others. Shanika remembers, “When we were discussing the number of deaths [in the Tamil community], I couldn’t believe it. [The deaths] had always seemed like a fiction to me. I asked how often [people die] and [the Tamils] said that [death] was commonplace. I was only a few hundred kilometers away [while growing up], but when I was asleep in my house with my mom, they were asleep on the grass. How did I not see it?… I escaped two suicide bombings by a matter of minutes, but then [the Tamils’] stories were worse than mine.”

Surprise about the other side’s suffering extended in both directions: When one Tamil student, who “knows what it’s like to love and to lose” according to Evan, read the story of a Sinhalese girl whose soldier boyfriend was lost in the fighting, the student fought back tears.

Immediately after the workshop, many students reported feeling “joyful” and “renewed.” Another, however, felt sad because she had not previously realized the extent to which prejudices and stereotypes prevailed even among AUW students.

In the weeks that followed the workshop, the healing continued and noticeable changes occurred. The Tamil students invited all the Sinhalese students to a Hindu festival that they were planning two days after the workshop; every single Sinhalese student attended voluntarily. In contrast, Umaiyal remembers last year at the Access Academy, “If there were some special events for a particular group, [that group would] usually go, eat, [take a] photo and return to our dorms… This Dhurka Pooja celebration was the first festival that Sinhalese and Tamil cooked together.” In addition, when two girls fell ill, Tamil and Sinhalese students alike visited both patients in the Health and Wellness Center, cooking them Sri Lankan foods and brewing them herbal drinks.

The process of change continues in more subtle ways as well. Crystal, another student, notes that prior to the workshop, “We would all say hello to each other in the hallway, but some of the friendships [would not go any deeper]. Now everyone is closer, truly close, with the knowledge that ‘I know your story and you know mine.’” Shanika, too, remembers that, “Before the workshop, we were reluctant to give our honest opinions. We would just say ‘it's fine.’ We had things in our hearts that we didn’t say… But now, I feel like we're sisters.” Umaiyal feels similarly: “This is my first experience living with Sinhalese. We did not have a good relationship [at the beginning of school]. I said hello in the hallway, I worked as a group in classroom, but I never ever shared my feelings with a Sinhala girl. They also did not share with me. We were really careful while we were discussing our political condition in our classes. After the workshop I feel some behavioral change in myself as well as the others… My negative concept about Sinhalese has changed.”

Many of the students expressed interest in taking active steps to help make a difference. One Tamil student thought of “explaining to my family and friends about the real concept of solving problems… [that even writing] an article or poem to a newspaper, would [help] make people understand the truth.” Similarly, Umaiyal writes that previously she thought she could not do anything until she finished her studies at AUW, but now she realizes that “by doing small things I can make a big difference in… peoples’ minds and heal their wounds.” Shanika, too, feels that understanding both sides “is not enough. When I finish my studies, I know I can do something for them and I’m going to do it. I want to do something and [the workshop] showed me I could.” Student Narmada also suggested to Evan that a group of AUW Sinhalese and Tamil students work together in a Sri Lankan refugee camp, perhaps even as a structured AUW-sponsored internship. Evan sees the larger group’s commitment to this idea as “a superb indication of their change, real change; I can’t think of anything stronger than that.”

While the process towards healing and reconciliation is invigorating and joyful for many of the students right now, much discussion, sharing, and work remains to be done. As an immediate next step, the students requested, and Evan is organizing, a peer mediation and conflict resolution training taught by an expert. Mahilini notes that “Growing Through Conflict” workshops should be held each year for incoming Sri Lankan students. Shanika would like other AUW students, who have also faced ethnic violence in countries such as India, Pakistan, or Afghanistan, to participate in similar workshops as well. For Sri Lankans, she says, “We have to do the same thing for all the coming generations and show them the real picture: we are all human, the only difference is our language and culture.” Evan hopes AUW will develop a course that formally studies the history of conflicts in the region and women’s reactions, attitudes and contributions to those conflicts. They all would love to see the idea of an AUW-sponsored internship in the Sri Lankan refugee camps become a reality.

Of course, Evan is the first to note that a deep transformation of mind and heart does not happen overnight: “You have to give people the space and time to change and then be patient, let it evolve.” But as Mahilini notes, “Small groups must understand each other before the whole country can understand each other.” In that case, one small step towards reconciliation has indeed been taken.

1 Percentages of population according to the Sri Lankan government’s official website: http://www.priu.gov.lk/TourCountry/Indextc.html. 2 Shastri, Amita. “The Tigers' Shadow: Bringing a Close to Sri Lanka's Long War.” Foreign Affairs. (http://www.foreignaffairs.com.) Council on Foreign Relations, Inc. Aug. 4, 2009. 3 “Agony in Sri Lanka’s Refugee Camp.” BBC News. May 24, 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8065594.stm. 4 Ibid.

Evangeline “Evan” Ekanayake, Deputy Director and Counselor at AUW’s Health and Wellness Center, holds a BA in psychology from Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, and an MSc in mental health studies from King’s College London School of Medicine. Evan has many years of experience working with diverse communities, including as a psychologist in many regions of Sri Lanka and as a therapist in south and central London. She has a keen awareness of the polarity between the Sinhalese and Tamils in her country from working among Sinhala populations in Sri Lanka’s south and Tamil communities in the country’s northeast. Moved by the pain of the two communities, she has always felt “called” to work towards healing the rift between these communities. There are currently 52 students from Sri Lanka enrolled in AUW.

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Notes from the Underground

A former Access Academy English teacher reminisces on student talent at AUW. By Kate Meehan

Throughout the 16 months that the inaugural Access Academy students were in class, they were involved in extracurricular activities and worked on independent, self-directed projects. These projects were often on topics of their own choosing, with self-fulfillment as their only reward. Examples included the Access Academy Broadcasting Company News Crew that filmed events throughout the year, the Photography Club, the Newspaper Club, the Art Action Class, and many individual documentary projects on an array of subjects. The first class of Access Academy students displayed innumerable talents and needed very little motivation to cultivate their natural gifts.

Towards the end of the fourth term of studies, the Student Affairs Department realized that the Access Academy had not yet given students a forum to demonstrate their many talents to each other, let alone to the community in Chittagong within which AUW is located.

As a result, a small group of dedicated students and teachers came together to plan the first Open House. The idea was simple: find a space in which students could display their own works of literature, art, and photography, and invite the immediate Access Academy community and neighbors to enjoy the celebration of talents. The Drama Club was invited to act out the dramas they had written and prepared over the term and the Culture Club took charge of cooking and selling foods from students’ different countries.

The planning committee determined that all proceeds raised from the Open House would be donated to the Access Academy Community Service Club, an organization founded by students who wanted to do more for the local, poor communities in Chittagong. Carly Brunswick, another Access Academy teacher, served as the group’s initial advisor. Community Service Club members were able to help many slum areas and local organizations while focusing the bulk of their energy and resources on supporting one particular school on Saturdays.

In the days leading up to the Open House, about 30 students took time out of their busy, exam-laden schedules to help prepare the submitted student works for display. A small group of students, headed by an extremely gifted student from the area, collected donations from local restaurants, boutiques, and distributors to use as prizes in an event raffle.

On Saturday, June 13, the doors to the Royal Garden Center opened at noon. Throughout the afternoon, more than 250 students, family, faculty, and community members enjoyed the artistic arrangement of student work and the three dramas put on by the Drama Club. Visitors were extremely impressed by the level of talent of the student artwork—one man even offered to buy a student’s painting! She quickly ran up to the organizers, Angela Saunders and myself, to ask if this was allowed. Her excitement was apparent, and while she ended up not selling the painting, it was not due to any lack of interest on the buyer’s part.

Although exhausted by the end of the day, students volunteered to stay until 9:00 p.m. to help take down the student artwork and return it to its rightful owners. Hopefully, the interest generated in the community and the self-confidence generated in the student body will motivate future classes to plan many more of these events in the years to come.

Kate Meehan received her bachelor of arts in African-American & African studies and international relations from the University of Virginia in 2007. She worked for 16 months as a WorldTeach volunteer at the Access Academy, where she taught grammar, literature, academic reading and writing, and served as Co-Director of the Office of Student Affairs with fellow volunteer Angela Saunders. She also led an extracurricular photography club, pitched in with the newspaper club, and helped run a student government leadership workshop.

Asked why she volunteered as an Asian University for Women teacher, she said: “I am upset and perplexed by the inequalities that exist in our world. One of the most infuriating statistics, to me, is the large gap between the education of women [and the education of] men.”

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AUW Students Transcend Borders

Access Academy students attend conference in Dubai. By Kate Meehan

This past March, I had the honor of traveling with six members of the inaugural Access Academy student body and a fellow teacher to an international conference in Dubai open to undergraduate and master’s-level students. “Education Without Borders” (EWB), a biennial conference hosted by the Higher Colleges of Technology, seeks to create student networks that will generate solutions to the most pressing issues facing the world today.

The trip was a series of firsts for all of us. For Angela Saunders, a fellow English teacher at the Access Academy, and me, it was the first time we were on the other side of conference-going; we were there as mentors and chaperones, not as delegates. For the students, it was the first time they had attended such an event, and the first time that many of them had met students from faraway countries like Brazil, South Africa, and Malawi. For one student, it was her first time leaving Bangladesh, her first time on a plane, and her first time traveling internationally.

And speaking from personal experience—these particular six students rocked it. The Asian University for Women could not have asked for a better, more impressive, more outgoing group of representatives. The girls networked with students and researchers from all over the world, offered in-depth information on issues plaguing South and Southeast Asia, and remained composed and eloquent throughout the conference. This does not mean, however, that they were afraid to correct misconceptions about their countries or argue about world issues. Indeed, they did so with poise and empathy, and asked honest, probing questions about countries and regions with which they were unfamiliar.

The six students that attended EWB 2009 were: Crystal Fernando (Sri Lanka), Marian Fernando (Sri Lanka), Jasmin Kurian (India), Renjini Thomas (India), Nasima Akter (Bangladesh), and Neha Rauniyar (Nepal). The selection process included application submission, research project proposals, and an interview with a panel that included Dr. Hoon Eng Khoo. The six that were chosen then wrote or filmed their research projects.

In February the Access Academy was told that all six of its students had been chosen to attend the EWB conference in Dubai. We were thrilled to learn that EWB would fully fund their trips.

There was much to be done before leaving Chittagong; visas were applied for, clothing was borrowed from friends, dinner etiquette—for full banquet dinners—was reviewed, and last-minute conversations on cultural differences were held. The day we left, about 50 students saw our van off, walking us down the driveway in front of 20 M.M. Ali Road, yelling “Safe travels! Good luck! Bring us back souvenirs!” We would be gone for a little under a week, but the anticipation felt by the eight of us travelers was not ours alone. We carried with us the hopes and excitement of the entire Access Academy student body and staff.

Angela, myself, and the other teachers and administrators in Bangladesh were nervous, mostly because the students themselves were nervous and had no idea what to expect from the experience. We need not have worried. At the first night’s meet-and-greet reception, we arrived to find our six students chatting with new friends and acquaintances from around the world. One of our girls grabbed my arm at one point and said breathlessly, “Miss Kate! There is someone you have to meet. He is from South Africa and I have already told him all about you.” It was a remarkable transformation to behold: students who were speaking shyly in our classrooms mere months ago were now networking and working the room. Angela and I were bursting with pride. We spent much of the next three days watching and supporting from the wings.

What perhaps impressed us the most, however, was the ability of these six students to keep everything in context. The conference was an elegant affair, and for many of the student presenters, it was their first time speaking to a crowd of hundreds. After one of the first panel presentations, Marian turned to Angela and me and remarked, “The information and research was great, but his presentation would have been much better if he had the kind of practice we get at the Access Academy.”

Witnessing the evolution of these six students over that week as they realized they were just as capable as their peers from around the world, and that they could, as a result, access just as many opportunities, made this conference one of my most inspiring moments as a teacher at the Access Academy. Our students not only impressed us, the other conference attendees, and the coordinators, but they also never stopped talking about the students that remained in class, countries away, back at the Access Academy. The students represented their classmates well, and paved the way for many future AUW delegations to take part in such groundbreaking conferences.

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Undergraduate Curriculum

AUW’s undergraduate curriculum is based on the firm belief that critical thinking skills, and the ability to learn and relearn, and not rote memorization of facts, are at the heart of a superb higher education.

The AUW faculty has focused on developing the undergraduate curriculum to reflect the University’s environment—cognizant of both the limitations and the opportunities inherent in establishing a first-rate university in a developing country—while also adopting the pedagogy of active learning that defines liberal arts learning.

AUW’s graduate schools in Environmental Engineering and Sustainable Development, Entrepreneurship and Management, Computer Sciences and Information & Communication Technology, and Law and Human Rights, are based on the premise that the core skills of an engineer, lawyer, computer scientist, or businesswoman remain the same regardless of geographical location. AUW is thus developing its graduate programs in conjunction with a number of reputable institutions around the world. Imperial College London is helping AUW establish its graduate school of Environmental Engineering and Sustainable Development, and Aalborg University, located in Denmark, has partnered with AUW to develop its graduate program in Computer Sciences and Information & Communication Technology.

AUW’s Undergraduate Curriculum Unveiled The launch of the Asian University for Women’s undergraduate program in August 2009 marked the culmination of our faculty’s hard work and a crucial milestone in the quest to bring an exceptional model of higher education to the promising young women of the region.

It was July in Bangladesh and the monsoon season was in full swing. The rain fell in torrents from a darkened sky against the windows of the building in Panchlaish;Panchlaish; inside, 20 women and men from around the world were engaged in animated conversation. Charts and notes littered the table in front of them; at the front of the room hung whiteboards covered in the illegible scrawl of academics. The task at hand was the planning of the AUW undergraduate curriculum and the individuals were AUW faculty members, a group of highly qualified individuals drawn from a pool of over 100 applicants, and AUW’s teaching and learning staff. Among them were two Fulbright Scholars and a myriad of teaching experiences, but all were united by a deep passion for AUW’s mission in the region. Dr. Polly Pook, a quantitative reasoning professor who received her postdoctoral fellowship from MIT, calls the AUW faculty group a “jewel.”

The professors faced a unique set of challenges. Having met each other for the first time upon their arrival in Chittagong, they had to work together to develop a superb liberal arts curriculum that catered to the needs of a diverse student body from a range of socioeconomic and religious backgrounds from across Asia and the Middle East. They also had to contend with the perception—pervasive in the region—that liberal arts universities are somehow inferior to vocational universities. In addition, faculty members hoped to produce an integrated curriculum that capitalized on areas of overlap between the disciplines. But most importantly, the curriculum had to meet AUW’s objective of creating a cadre of women leaders in the region. The faculty was committed to transforming AUW students into active thinkers who could, in the words of Dr. Pook, “form opinions, critically solve problems, and communicate effectively so they can lead others.”

The professors began the planning process by establishing the learning outcomes of the undergraduate program (please see sidebar for more information). They then broke into smaller groups to familiarize themselves with the current literature in their fields, before convening to discuss the successes and pitfalls of various academic models. The group read the latest research on brain development, psychology, and the learning processes of young adults and women in particular. In this way, the faculty sought to provide AUW students with a meticulously planned curriculum that benefited from the experiences of other institutions, while also offering students a wholly tailored and effective approach to learning.

This method differed greatly not only from the methods of regional universities that are overwhelmingly vocational in nature, but also from the methods of liberal arts universities in the West. Ms. Sarah Amin, a social sciences professor who studied at McGill University in Canada, notes that from the very beginning the AUW faculty members were able to transcend standard protocol. “The objective was to develop a curriculum with a focus on learning rather than issues of grading, or attendance, or credit; things that normally in other universities are the first step. I found that exciting,” she says. Dr. Pook agrees: “We actually started in a way I found unusual… First we did team building, then we made sure we were all educated and up to the same level, then we broke into groups and started designing our own curricula, continually coming back and seeing where there were possibilities for integration.” Faculty members were able to identify many points of integration between the disciplines and even coordinated their class schedules to ensure the overlap of subject content. Dr. Pook concedes that “the ground is pretty fertile for [integration].” Ms. Amin reiterates that the goal was “to make integration happen not just within our discipline but across our disciplines.” Although integrated curricula are not unique to AUW, the University was unique in that it promoted “Writing Across the Curriculum,” or WAC, from the first stages of the planning process. Most universities that establish integrated curriculum writing do so without effectively training their faculties. But at AUW, the faculty was trained from the start, guided by a Fulbright specialist and WAC expert who worked with the faculty over the course of a month.

After weeks of intensive planning, the undergraduate curriculum was launched on August 23, 2009. Dr. Pook chuckles as she describes that chaotic first week of classes, saying, “It was pretty wild.” But faculty and students were thrilled to start the undergraduate program. When asked to contrast AUW to past learning experiences, one student responds: “There is no comparison. We were just memorizing things. But here, the teachers make us think. We can think by ourselves now.”

AUW faculty members teach collaboratively in the classroom to facilitate greater student learning. The result is that there are often three professors in one classroom, a dramatic increase in the faculty to student ratio. Says Ms. Amin: “We were all a little curious; it was something we had never done before. But it’s working well.”

The faculty has also gone to great lengths to promote hands-on learning. In her quantitative reasoning class, for example, Dr. Pook teaches her students about dimensions by having them measure their bedrooms. Another experiment involved observing the geckos that are common to the region and can be found on the building’s balconies and roof. Ms. Amin has her students interviewing members of the AUW community in her social sciences class. She notes that those interviews are “something that normally wouldn’t happen… until the last year of a program.”

The first year of AUW’s undergraduate curriculum offers courses in the humanities, quantitative reasoning, social sciences, and integrated sciences. All the disciplines will focus on the Pak Mun Dam in Thailand as a case study at the start of the spring term.

In their first year of quantitative reasoning, students learn to apply the fundamentals of quantitative reasoning—logic, numeracy, problem solving, computer modeling, probability, and statistics—to everyday life situations. They analyze their personal finances, news reports, political speeches, advertisements, and the modeling of scientific data in light of these concepts. In this way, the course is designed to “ground numbers in their own practical experience,” says Dr. Pook. She notes that a “lot of these women have studied math and understand book learning, but they don’t understand what numbers really mean… Everybody, regardless of what field they’re going into, needs to understand numbers and critique quantitative information.” Recent projects have included group-led analyses of article headlines and the data included in these articles to find discrepancies between the two. Next term, students will employ graphs to study the flow of river water through the Pak Mun Dam.

The social sciences broadly center on themes of self, gender, class, and the nation-state. This term, students are exploring ideas of self and gender as building blocks to their future learning, analyzing the roles of gender and society in shaping individual and collective action. Students are also learning the methodology for designing their own questionnaires from a stakeholder perspective. Next term, the classes will use the Pak Mun Dam case study to raise questions about the politics of dams, examining issues such as ownership over water, forced migration, race, and ethnicity.

The integrated sciences offer students a contextual framework for lifelong learning in the sciences. The course promises to make students scientifically literate and capable of advocating for evidence-based change in their communities. In the fall term, students are studying the role of human behavior in the occurrence and spread of real-world drug-resistant diseases like HIV/AIDS, pandemic flu, and malaria. Each student has been assigned her own disease; she is now designing and conducting her own experiments, creating visual aids to explain that disease and trace how it becomes resistant to drugs, and formulating a real-world plan to mitigate the spread of the disease. The spring term will focus on the Pak Mun Dam as a case study for the water cycle. Students will design and conduct experiments to simulate water flow and test the effects of water and nutrients on plant growth. They will also write position papers on the Pak Mun Dam using scientific data gathered throughout the term.

In the humanities, the fall term focuses on promoting self-knowledge and self-confidence through the theme “Traversing Bodies of Knowledge.” Through the use of journals, visual designs, essays, poetry, and short stories, students actively engage in a creative learning process to explore the various humanities disciplines. To improve critical thinking skills, students are asked to interpret texts—poetry and prose—and visuals, such as art and architecture. Term two will mark a shift in focus from the individual to civilizations.

Many AUW professors are products of a liberal arts education themselves, and are eager to impart their love of the liberal arts to their students. “There is a serious lack of that kind of education in Asia—and I think it is very valuable in the creation of active citizens,” says Ms. Amin. Dr. Pook credits her success in a number of different fields including microbiology, architecture, robotics, and mathematics to her liberal arts education as an undergraduate at Brown University. She comments, “I’ve actually excelled in all [those] fields. And I truly believe it’s because I was taught to learn.”

So far, it would seem that the faculty is making its mark. One student notes that in her native India students are asked to choose one subject to study and then simply memorize facts for exams. She says of the AUW curriculum, “It’s a new thing for us and it’s so good—all students have the same opinion.” She points to her newfound passion for psychology, a subject she would not have ordinarily studied in the course of early specialization in an Indian university. A student from Chittagong echoes those sentiments: “We get to know all the major topics, making our ideas broader.”

The AUW undergraduate curriculum is still a work in progress, and select features will most certainly be adjusted over time to meet the goals of the University. Yet all signs point to a successful start to a curriculum that will be the springboard for generations of talented Asian women leaders to come. Dr. Pook raves about the pioneering undergraduate class, saying: “The students are amazing. They’re really eager, they’re wide open, and even the ones who are challenged are just working so hard. [Meanwhile] the ones who are having an easier time are setting themselves up as peer tutors.”

Rewind to a few years ago, when the Asian University for Women was still just a vision, a theory of change that proposed the unthinkable: forming a university that challenged the accident of birth that determines a girl’s socioeconomic status, her nationality, and her background, and until now, her opportunities. The launch of the undergraduate curriculum in 2009 represented a major milestone in the realization of this vision. Three hundred young women, who are now hard at work in Chittagong in four apartment buildings that have been converted into classrooms, serve as a testament to AUW’s blossoming success.

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AUW’s Undergraduate Curriculum: Learning Outcomes

Learning outcomes for humanities: Students who have completed their first year in humanities will have the ability to interpret, explain, and create visual images and oral narratives; to translate oral or textual narratives into visuals and vice versa; and to offer alternative avenues of expression.

Learning outcomes for social sciences: Students who have completed their first year in social sciences will have the ability to identify and illustrate how society shapes social behavior; to state how different conceptions of self result from varying socio-economic statuses; to analyze gender as a biological, psychological, and social construct; and to describe how these constructs affect individual and social behavior.

Learning outcomes for quantitative reasoning: Students who have completed their first year in quantitative reasoning will have the ability to ground numbers in real-world experience; to read, write, and analyze quantitative information; to critique quantitative results and draw conclusions; and to employ graphing calculators and computers to both validate and communicate their findings.

Learning outcomes for integrated sciences: Students who have completed their first year in integrated sciences will have the ability to apply scientific thinking to the world; to differentiate between evidence and opinion; to make informed decisions about issues with scientific components; and to clearly communicate their evidence-based solutions to real-world problems.

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Troubled Waters: The Debate over Pak Mun Dam

Construction on Pak Mun Dam in Thailand may have ended more than a decade ago, but the dam continues to cause controversy.

Amidst strong local opposition, Pak Mun Dam was built by the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand in 1994 at a cost of $231 million. The dam is located on the Mun River, a tributary of the Mekong River.

The World Bank—which contributed $23 million to the project—went to great lengths to try to limit the dam’s impact on villagers living alongside the Mun River by imposing strict guidelines designed to protect their rights. Nonetheless, thousands of fishermen have been forced to forfeit their livelihoods and migrate to big cities like Bangkok in search of work. 1 A report published by the World Commission on Dams in 2000 found that fishermen were catching 60% to 80% fewer fish in the aftermath of the dam’s construction. In 1993, Thailand’s Department of Fisheries found a total of 109 fish species living in the Mun River.2 Seven years later, 56 different species of fish had become extinct.3 Though experts contend that dams can be valuable sources of electricity, critics of Pak Mun Dam maintain that the dam falls short even in this regard. They claim it generates only 40 megawatts of its projected 136 megawatts of electricity. 4

Pak Mun Dam is just one of the many dams that have caused controversy in the region. Given the relevance and significance of these debates, AUW faculty chose Pak Mun Dam as a case study for the second semester. Faculty member Dr. Polly Pook says that the dam will force students to grapple with themes of social justice, environmental protection, and economic development. Pak Mun Dam has an impact on both local communities and international relations.

It raises numerous questions that relate to, in the words of Dr. Pook, “The use of water, its protection, fair distribution… migratory patterns based on water and fishing… the self-identity of people living on a river… the concept of water in narrative and other art forms, hydroelectric energy… The list goes on and on.” AUW students will thus have the unique opportunity to analyze Pak Mun Dam from a range of perspectives throughout the semester and ground their learning in real-world issues.

1 Sherer, Paul M. “Dam in Thailand Threatens a Way of Life.” The Globe and Mail (Canada) Mar. 1996: Lexis-Nexis. https://w3.nexis.com/hottopics/lndp/default.asp. Accessed 21 Oct. 2009 2 Ibid. 3 “A Thai Dam, a Mistake, a Debt.” Christian Science Monitor (Boston) Aug. 2000: 9. Lexis-Nexis. https://w3.nexis.com/hottopics/lndp/default.asp. Accessed 21 Oct. 2009 4 Ibid.
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AUW’s Fortune

Henry Rosovsky, the author of The University: An Owner’s Manual, counsels AUW.

In the spring of 2000, Henry Rosovsky was sitting in his Harvard office when he received a knock on his door from Kamal Ahmad, a fellow participant in the World Bank/UNESCO Task Force on Higher Education and Society in Developing Countries. The former Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Geyser University Professor Emeritus, Henry was also the Co-Chair of the Task Force, which sought to explore the future of higher education in developing countries. Henry and Kamal, along with experts from 13 different countries, had just returned from an overseas tour and a number of institutions. The Task Force’s findings, published in a report called “Higher Education and Developing Countries: Peril and Promise” (www.tfhe.net), found that in the context of globalization—in which knowledge is a nation’s greatest force for development—higher education is no longer a luxury. With 80% of the population living in developing countries, and the gap between the rich and poor only growing larger, universities are now critical to national economic and social development.

Henry welcomed Kamal into his office, and listened quietly while Kamal presented his proposal for a merit-based regional university for women, to be located in Bangladesh, the country of his origin. Henry says now, with a chuckle, that despite his strong intellectual interest in the project, he had considerable doubts about the viability of the Asian University for Women (AUW). He admits to exclaiming: “This cannot be done!” The idea of building a university from scratch; writing a world-class curriculum; hiring top-notch faculty members; and recruiting students to the unlikely port city of Chittagong; all the while adhering to a vision that aimed to do nothing less than transform a region, seemed virtually impossible. But Henry’s admiration for Kamal—“If some other person had come to me, my doubts might have triumphed”—along with his passion for AUW as a wholly different kind of institution, led him to join the AUW Support Foundation (AUWSF) Board of Directors and then its Executive Committee, which meets regularly to guide the development of the University. Nearly a decade later, he could not be happier he did.

Born in the Free City of Danzig in 1927 to Russian parents, Henry lived in Belgium before coming to the United States. He attended the College of William and Mary before attending Harvard as a graduate student in economics in 1949. While at Harvard, Henry became interested in Japanese economic growth and moved to Tokyo to write his dissertation. He accepted his first teaching post at the University of California at Berkeley and then returned to Harvard as a faculty member in 1965. During his Harvard tenure, Henry held various distinguished posts including Professor of Economics, Chairman of the Economics Department, Associate Director of Harvard’s East Asian Research Center, and a position on the Harvard Corporation, the university’s most powerful governing board. As Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, he oversaw “8,500 students, some 6,000 employees, a budget of over $200 million, and nearly 1,000 teachers of all ranks.” Henry also served as a Visiting Professor at Stanford University, Tokyo University, Hitotsubashi University, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

In short, Henry has worked in universities his entire life. He says that universities “are not businesses—they can’t be looked upon as a factory. They’re very special institutions.”

Governance issues are of particular interest to him. To that end, he wrote The University: An Owner’s Manual, a book that addresses the challenges universities face and offers advice to their “owners”: students, administrators, faculty, and trustees. Henry believes that the United States is home to many of the world’s best universities because of the country’s emphasis on liberal arts education. American higher education stresses a holistic approach to learning, one that places an emphasis on interaction among the student body.

Although Henry hopes that AUW will someday reach world-class level, he is quick to defend its regional identity. He has no interest in watching AUW become a transplanted “little Harvard, or a little Oberlin.” For higher education to succeed, the institution must have “organic ties to the society in which it operates.” He also believes strongly in the ability of single-sex education to create a cadre of female leaders. It is no accident, he asserts, that the Seven Sisters—a consortium of prestigious, all-women colleges that at one time included Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Vassar, Wellesley, and Radcliffe—have produced a disproportionate number of female leaders. “There is something in the environment that encourages female leadership to emerge more easily than a coeducational system,” he says.

Henry remains an important and cherished voice at AUW. He marvels at the University’s evolution, a progress he has charted closely. “What has been accomplished is quite remarkable; there is a faculty, there are some deans, they have a curriculum, a vision… This is a unique experience. There’s not much to compare it to, at least in my lifetime.”

1 Rosovsky, Henry. The University: An Owner’s Manual (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 1991), p. 25.
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Building AUW’s Campus

 

AUW Recruits Students from Afghanistan

AUW’s first Afghan students arrive in Chittagong.

The train hurtled through Bangladesh’s countryside, tracing the path from Dhaka, the country’s capital, to Chittagong, a port city in the south. Rice fields and trees were cloaked under a thick veil of darkness that was seldom interrupted save for the shocking bursts of light from a passing village or town. The meditative rocking of the train may have lulled other passengers to sleep, but Marvah, a young Afghan woman who had started her journey in the city of Kabul weeks before, was wide awake. She sat watch over her seven dozing Afghan companions whom she had first met in Kabul, and stayed alert to her foreign surroundings; she knew neither the language nor the country. But as the journey dragged on, Marvah shook one of her friends awake, indicating that it was now her turn to keep watch over the group and their possessions. After three days in airports and on planes, it did not take long for Marvah to join the others in sleep.

These young Afghan women were members of the Access Academy, and the first Afghan students to be admitted to the Asian University for Women (AUW). Residents of various provinces throughout Afghanistan, including Herat, Kabul, and Daikundi, the girls had convened in Kabul a few weeks earlier for what should have been a brief stopover to secure their passports and visas. But their visit to the capital coincided with the August 20 presidential elections, and thus a quick stopover transformed into a two-week stay in a city caught up in post-election fray. In these weeks after the election, the country came to a halt and the girls’ hopes of obtaining travel papers all but dissipated.

AUW began its extensive recruitment campaign in Afghanistan in early 2009 when it partnered with BRAC Afghanistan. Mr. Fazle Hasan Abed, who founded BRAC in 1972, serves on AUW’s Board of Advisors and has consented to be a trustee on the founding Board of the University. With the help of Mr. Abed, AUW partnered with BRAC Afghanistan to recruit talented Afghan students under the rubric of a broad partnership with the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. The Afghan Ministry of Women’s Affairs and Ministry of Higher Education coordinated recruitment while BRAC Afghanistan handled the logistics of the effort on the ground.

After AUW made initial contact with BRAC Afghanistan, Mr. Sakhi dad Abrar of BRAC’s Education Program was assigned the task of speaking with the Afghanistan Ministry of Education, Ministry of Higher Education, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs on AUW’s behalf. Joined by Mr. Shahabuddin Ahmed, Program Manager for BRAC Afghanistan, Mr. Abrar met with the ministries to present AUW, but it turned out the ministries needed little convincing. The “ministries showed their utmost interest to this initiative,” Mr. Ahmed says. He credits the strong relationship between the ministries and the BRAC Afghanistan Education Program for the relative ease with which the ministries accepted AUW’s recruitment in Afghanistan. He notes that BRAC Afghanistan is currently “providing education to some 115,000 non-school-going children, most of them… girls in the underserved areas.”

BRAC is the biggest NGO in the world and has offices in all but 10 of the 34 Afghan provinces. The organization promotes development initiatives related to education, health, microfinance, agriculture and livestock, and national solidarity. Specific projects include partnering with the Ministry of Health to develop a national program for malaria and tuberculosis alleviation, instituting a microfinance system with a focus on women, and working with the Ministry of Education on the Girls Education Project to build more public schools as well as improve existing schools.

The Ministry of Education launched a nationwide media campaign for AUW in early 2009 by advertising in daily newspapers and flooding the airwaves with radio announcements and television commercials. The Ministry of Education also alerted provincial Education Directors to AUW and they in turn made announcements about AUW in their provinces’ local universities and schools. Marvah first learned about AUW from a teacher at her high school. As a result of these efforts, 80 young women from across the country applied for scholarships to AUW’s Access Academy.

BRAC Afghanistan, led by Mr. Fazul Haq and Mr. Shahabuddin Ahmed, was finally able to secure passports and visas for the eight Afghan students in Kabul. The young women traveled through Islamabad and Karachi before arriving in Dhaka, Bangladesh, but they still had farther to travel. An AUW representative took the exhausted students out for a brief dinner in the capital before shepherding them onto a train to Chittagong. Surprisingly, Marvah says that the hours that followed were the most challenging of the trip. “We had never traveled by train,” she points out. Perhaps it was also the proximity to their destination that fed the girls’ trepidation. The train ride that brought them steadily closer to Chittagong may have provoked a fuller understanding of what it meant to leave home and study in a foreign country for six years.

When the Afghan students arrived at the University in the early morning hours, however, their worries were immediately eased by the enthusiasm of the waiting AUW staff and faculty members. “When we saw their warm greeting it made us forget [the difficulty we had from Dhaka to Chittagong],” Marvah says.

Transportation posed a significant challenge for the applicants. Large swaths of territory in Afghanistan, a mountainous and remote country, are under Taliban control. For example, Herat, the province where Marvah is from, lies to the northwest of the country and is separated from Kabul by numerous mountain ranges, winding roads, and Taliban checkpoints. From remote provinces, it can take up to three days to reach Kabul by car. The condition of these roads aside—Mr. Ahmed says only that they are “not smooth”—the Taliban checkpoints represent a dangerous threat to aspiring young women in pursuit of an international higher education. “The roads are very insecure in many provinces… The main obstacle is… the way the Taliban checks vehicles for… the suspected people who are related to NGOs or government and if [they are] found, [the Taliban] creates problems,” Mr. Ahmed explains.

Furthermore, Afghan women who want to pursue a college degree abroad may face obstacles from within their own communities. Mr. Ahmed notes that even when parents are supportive of their daughters’ ambitions, they still have to win the approval of the village elders before they can send their daughters abroad for a higher education. Mr. Ahmed blames this system on Afghanistan’s deeply patriarchal society that restricts the independence of women, and notes that unless parents take an active role in the process and personally petition the elders, their daughters will have a difficult time attending AUW. “Women [who] work with males outside their house… [are] not taken in a positive way by the elders,” Mr. Ahmed explains.

Just meeting AUW’s stringent qualifications is a feat for many Afghan applicants, given the difficulties they face in attaining a high-quality education. Mr. Ahmed says: “Afghanistan is a radical and conservative Muslim country where a negative social mindset exists on girls’ education… in many areas, adolescent girls are not allowed to go to school if the school is situated out[side of] their community… This is not only that the parents are not willing but [also because] there is a big threat from the Taliban.” In addition, male teachers are forbidden to teach young girls, urther limiting the educational opportunities for women.

A lack of English skills remains a formidable obstacle to AUW’s recruitment in the region. According to BRAC Afghanistan’s Mr. Ahmed, many AUW applicants were unable to pass an English proficiency test. Marvah was fortunate: she was able to attend her local high school and take summer courses in English that prepared her for an international education.

In Marvah’s case, her mother was integral to ensuring she could attend AUW. When Marvah was first accepted by the University, members of her community were firmly set against her enrolling. But her mother, who works at an NGO, was able to argue with them until they relented.

Of the approximately 30 Afghan students who passed the entrance exam, AUW narrowed the group down to nine candidates, one of whom deferred her acceptance. In late August, eight Afghan women came to Chittagong.

Marvah admits to being homesick when she first arrived at AUW, but now asserts: “I am enjoying… learning here and being with my friends.” She appreciates the diversity of the student body and is even learning Bangla in her spare time. She hopes to major in politics, philosophy, and economics, and speaks passionately of her desire to practice law in Afghanistan. “The women who live in Afghanistan really need someone to help them… they can’t defend their rights against men, they need more support,” she says.

It is her belief that AUW will prepare her to play a vital role in the battle for women’s rights in her native country. As an AUW graduate, she says, “I would love to be a very strong woman.”

No matter the difficulties, wherever there is a need for women’s education throughout Asia and the Middle East, AUW will continue to develop and hone its recruitment strategy. This year it was Afghanistan; next year the University hopes to extend recruitment into Iran, Iraq, Indonesia, and Yemen.

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Dr. Dipak Jain Talks True Significance

The Asian University for Women (AUW) is honored to announce that Dr. Dipak Jain, former Dean of Northwestern University’s prestigious Kellogg School of Business, located in Evanston, Illinois, USA, will serve as Chairman of the Steering Committee for the planning and the creating of AUW’s Graduate School of Entrepreneurship and Management.

When 26-year-old Dipak Jain first arrived in the United States in January of 1983 after three days of plane travel, he was shocked by the size of the Dallas airport, a complex of admittedly gigantic proportions even by American standards. But for Dipak, who had spent his entire life in a small town called Tezpur in the northeastern Indian state of Assam, the Dallas airport was a city unto itself. “The airport was bigger than my whole hometown!” he says. Looking back almost 20 years later as the Dean of the prestigious Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, Dipak chuckles at the serendipitous turn of events that brought him to where he is today.

Dipak displayed a love of academics from a young age. He knew early on that he wanted to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, who worked as a schoolteacher for 48 years. He says, “I have never considered teaching as a profession. Teaching is something I worship. For me, going into a classroom is like going into a temple.” After excelling at his local school in Assam, he earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics at a community college before enrolling in Gauhati University for a master’s degree in statistics. He notes that his initial decision to study mathematics was driven by practicality rather than passion. To study mathematics, “the only thing you need is pen and paper,” he explains. But he quickly became an outstanding mathematics undergraduate and graduate student and was awarded the state’s gold medal for two years running. These medals honored Dipak as the single best undergraduate and graduate in all of Assam.

Dipak next turned his attention to a PhD in mathematics only to discover that conducting research was near impossible in Assam. “We didn’t have a good library… and a journal used to take three to four months to reach [us],” he comments. So in 1980 he began writing to professors in the United States in the hopes of obtaining their research papers. In 1982, his letter reached a professor at the University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas) who immediately recognized Dipak’s potential. He wrote to Dipak inquiring if he would be interested in doing a PhD at UT Dallas and urged him to submit his test scores. Dipak, who had never even heard of the GMAT or TOEFL, could only send the professor his transcript. Shortly after, he received a letter of admission and an offer of full financial aid from UT Dallas in the mail. Thus, without ever filling out an application, Dipak boarded a plane to the United States to begin a life foreign to him in every respect. As he notes, “Man proposes, [but] God disposes.”

After completing his PhD, Dipak joined the Kellogg School of Management as a marketing professor in 1986, before climbing the Kellogg ranks to become Deputy Dean in 1996 and Dean in 2001, a position he held for eight years. During Dipak’s tenure, Kellogg School became the number one business school in the country. The school also developed joint programs with business schools in Israel, Hong Kong, Germany, Brazil, Thailand, India, and Canada, a reflection of Dipak’s strong belief in international collaboration. He says, “In today’s world you need to live with globalization… It is like a force of gravity. If you are part of this world you have to think beyond the United States.”

As Dean, Dipak ushered in a new era of Kellogg’s history by establishing its mission “From Success to Significance,” a motto that suggests that the true metric of success for business leaders is neither personal nor corporate gain, but the degree to which they contribute to the greater good. While counseling anxious students, Dipak often found himself referring to a favorite quote that exemplifies this theme: “To the world you may be a person, but to a person you may be the world.” During his time at Kellogg, Dipak wove a commitment to social responsibility directly into the school curriculum.

A naturally humble, soft-spoken man, Dipak credits his meteoric rise to the many people who helped him along the way: the teachers at his local Assam school who lent him their books when he could not afford his own; the UT Dallas professor who made the fateful decision to read his letter; the colleagues at Kellogg who helped him navigate the school when he first arrived as a marketing professor despite his background in mathematics. Now, when he gets the chance to help others, “I feel very fortunate,” he says. “We may be born differently with different intellects, but everyone should have the opportunity to excel.”

It should therefore come as no surprise that Dipak has joined the Asian University for Women (AUW) as Chairman of the Steering Committee for the Graduate School of Entrepreneurship and Management. “When I heard about AUW… I thought, what a great thing we can do,” he says. “You can see that [AUW] is giving a new life to these women. It’s like a dream for them. And if people are willing to make the dream into a reality, I feel very privileged to be associated with it.” Dipak is joined on the Steering Committee by David Schmittlein, Dean of MIT’s Sloan School of Management; Patricia Greene, former Provost of Babson College; and Ritu Banga, former President and current member of the Executive Board of Joint Schools Activities, Inc. Preliminary discussions for the curriculum have focused on five concentrations within the field of Entrepreneurship and Management: Management of Manufacturing Enterprises; Entrepreneurship with a Focus on Small and Medium-sized Enterprises; Project Finance and Management (including infrastructure projects); and Accounting and Financial Control. The business school will be open to both AUW graduates and women who have completed their undergraduate degrees elsewhere.

As Chairman of the Steering Committee, Dipak will bring his extensive background in business strategy and education to bear. Since he has stepped down as Dean of the Kellogg School, he wants to spread the knowledge he has acquired throughout his career according to a “sprinkler strategy.” He hopes to engage in a kind of “cross-pollination, moving from one flower to another like a bee, to see if we can do something for mankind.”

It is this devotion to helping others that originally drew Dipak to AUW. Yet he also speaks of his personal belief in the need to educate women from across Asia and the Middle East. He says that his mother, the most influential person in his life, “was not educated and she brought up five kids. In spite of that she has done such a good job; imagine if she also could have gone to school and been educated. She could have been so much more.”

Like the image of the bee traversing from one flower to the next, Dipak understands that sometimes the greatest changes take place at the most minute levels, one petal and one woman at a time. As he notes: “[If] a woman from Afghanistan… gets an education and she can go back and start a small business, then we have made a difference.”

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Foreign Minister of Bangladesh Welcomes AUW International Delegation and Reaffirms the Government’s Support for AUW

Dr. Dipu Moni, a practicing lawyer and a practicing physician with training from the University of London (in law) and Johns Hopkins University (in medicine), was named the first female Foreign Minister of Bangladesh in 2009. The Foreign Minister attended a ceremony held in Dhaka on December 2, 2009, to welcome 35 philanthropists from the U.S., Italy, Hong Kong, Japan, Kuwait, and Thailand, who came on a three-day study tour of the Asian University for Women. The international delegation was led by Ms. Janet Montag, a member of the AUWSF Board and Chair of the University’s Development Committee.

Dr. Dipu Moni made the following remarks in welcoming the AUW guests to Bangladesh:

I have not had the opportunity yet to visit this young University but I keep it in my heart. I can, in the eye of my mind, already imagine what kind of place it must be: A University that recognizes no ethnic, religious, or cultural barriers; a University where a Vietnamese student lives and studies side-by-side with a Cambodian and Afghan or a Bangladeshi or Pakistani. A University that says that you may be the first in your family ever to get to a place of higher learning but nothing can stop you from being the best. A University where the age-old entrapment of prejudice against class, national origin or other contingencies of birth are overcome by the enlightenment of a liberating education and the promise of a future where the best possibilities in each of us are nurtured and realized. As the first female Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bangladesh, I take particular pride that this country of ours that has benefited so much from the goodwill of people around the world can now host an institution that educates not only our own women but those from so many other friendly countries. I am told the Asian University for Women already has students from 12 countries and next year there will be several more countries added, including Iraq, Iran and Indonesia. In my mind there can be no greater force for change than a band of women educated and empowered who carry a vision of their own and have the courage to defy and overcome whatever unreasonable resistance that may be in their way. In the annals of the history of Bangladesh, there are indeed many inspiring such role models.

In the fight against the British for our own independence, it was a young woman named Preeti Lota from Chittagong who dared to go into Chittagong Club to resist the British rule. Ironically, even in her bid to resist which cost her own life, she had dressed as a man, sadly capturing the truth that even in our sacrifices we are often inhibited from acting in our own name and persona. Fortunately, we have made tremendous progress since those days. You are in a country, I am happy to say, where the government is led by a woman as is the Opposition. There are five other women in the Cabinet, holding portfolios such as agriculture, home affairs, and my own in foreign affairs. We have nearly 100 percent enrollment of girls in primary schools and the enrollment of girls in secondary schools is also fast rising. It is estimated that nearly three million women work in garments and textile factories alone—paving the way for a radical redefinition of women’s role in the economy. Our microfinance programmes that engage nearly 15 million women have attracted world attention. So, it is perfectly fitting that you have chosen to locate the Asian University for Women in this land.

I am aware that the Asian University for Women is currently operating out of the rented facilities and the urgency to move its programmes on a permanent campus. I have seen the images of the new campus model and that of the first buildings. They are inspiring and I am inspired. I am also aware that the start of construction has been delayed due to some pending issues relating to land that need to be resolved with the Government. I can assure you on behalf of the Hon’ble Prime Minister who serves as the Chief Patron of the University and under whose previous tenure the concept of the University was first accepted in Bangladesh, we will do everything within our means to make Bangladesh the most hospitable place for this institution and its students and faculty and staff. The land issues will be resolved and whatever support the University requires from the Government will be forthcoming from every quarter. The Asian University for Women is a beacon of hope that brightens the prospects of all of us. We will do our share to keep the flame alight and make it brighter.

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Raising a Voice Against Injustice

Azmina Karim is from Bangladesh and was a member of the Access Academy’s inaugural class.

In South Asian countries, women find their identity by attaching someone’s name to their own. They think a woman’s identity lies in being someone’s wife or mother. Unfortunately, I was not different from these women. Before coming here, my world was small. It was all about me, my family, and my bookish knowledge. To me, an education meant getting a degree for a good job and that was my ultimate goal in life.

To break all these archaic ideas, we saw a ray of hope through the Asian University for Women (AUW). AUW was established in Bangladesh and it added a new dimension to education. It has changed the thoughts of many women who thought women were born to be at home; women who thought that even with an education they would be unable to do anything.

The dream of one man has changed hundreds of lives. He understood that women need to be empowered for the betterment of society. Now, after spending 13 months in AUW’s Access Academy, my philosophy of life has gradually changed. Sometimes when I recall those memories, I realize my thoughts were immature. Life is more than this. Life means knowing for enlightenment.

When I heard my fellow Access Academy student Duth Kimsru’s speech on October 18, 2008, in which she talked about her life, she mentioned that her knowledge of English before AUW was so limited that she could only read short articles. But six months later, she was communicating in English with hundreds of people. That day she taught me that no matter what your roots are or how badly you have struggled in life, it does not forestall you from having big dreams. If you have dreams and a firm belief in yourself, everything in this world can be achieved. When she was recounting her life story, I could see tears in everyone’s eyes.

That reminded me of my homeroom teacher at the Access Academy, Ms. Niki. She said, “‘I believe in all religions. We call our God different names but follow the same rituals; we follow paths where God asks us to preserve humanity. I believe we are all tied to the same religion.’” Regardless of different religious beliefs, everyone felt empathy for Kimsru because they were able to relate with her through the bond of humanity.

After seeing my teachers, I wanted to work like them. Thus I have joined the community service club of Access Academy where I go to Usho School to teach children who live in slums. Teachers always inspire us to do social work: they say that every student in Access Academy ought to bring change to her society by raising her voice against any injustice or discrimination she sees. Inspired by this motto, I have made a documentary about gender discrimination against women and deaf children.

While working on my second documentary, I was ashamed to see how people treat others who they believe are inferior to them. I decided to work further with mentally challenged children, and specifically, children with autism. People forget children are precious gifts from God.

We should take proper care of them rather than ignoring them. I have made a documentary where the grief of these children is made explicit. I have noticed that because of the lack of facilities, training, funds, and treatments, these children die each day. I have raised funds to buy them some necessary supplies, like swings and rocking chairs.

Though the task was not easy, when I gave these things to them and saw their smiling faces, I felt my hard work was worth it. I am very thankful to AUW for making me realize my obligation towards my community and for changing my perspective on life. I am very fortunate that I got a new life through AUW, which makes me feel like someone special in society.

Azmina Karim is from Bangladesh and was a member of the Access Academy's inaugural class. She matriculated into AUW’s undergraduate program in July of 2009. After AUW, she hopes to work for an organization devoted to advocacy for disabled children in her home country. The excerpts above are from Azmina’s speech, delivered at AUW’s screening of Lifting the Veil in Tokyo, Japan, on May 28, 2009. Azmina’s documentary film, which she also presented at AUW’s screening of Lifting the Veil in Tokyo, is titled This Silent World, and is about the experiences of deaf children. Azmina negotiated access to these children through their school and their guardians. She has raised 10,000 taka to purchase special equipment (such as sensory integration products) for these children. She is currently working with a school for children with autism to gather material for her next documentary.

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AUW Welcomes the Newest Members of its International Council of Advisors

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