| July 7, 2008 Asian University pushes for economic and social change
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(Prat Thakkar, NECN) - Changing lives one woman at a time, half a world away. That is the goal of one group in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They are pushing to empower women from some of the poorest regions of Asia. They're hoping this effort will start a social and economic revolution.
It looks much like a student cultural show, but this gathering on April 5 2008, in Chittagong, Bangladesh was much more. It was the opening celebration for the Asian University for women, a bold new venture in women's education.
Many of the women here come from some of the poorest, rural parts of the world. They are high achievers, at the top of their high school classes, intelligent, motivated, but their future looked bleak, marked by poverty and few opportunities... Without the Asian university, a quality college and graduate school education would be unreachable... the goal here is to change the lives of these women, and help them change their worlds.
But there's also another goal... promoting regional cooperation. The women come from countries that have battled each other for decades... India and Pakistan for example.
The idea was born about a decade ago when Kamal Ahmad helped launch a world bank task force on higher education...he wondered what role a rigorous university education could play in empowering poor women in developing countries. Last year, Ahmad set up offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts...and began building a groundbreaking University half a world
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