Fazle Hasan Abed


Sir Fazle Hasan Abed was the founder of BRAC, one of the world's largest non-governmental organizations.
Sir Fazle was honored with numerous national and international awards for his contributions in social development, including the LEGO Prize, Laudato Si' Award, Thomas Francis, Jr Medal in Global Public Health, World Food Prize, Spanish Order of Civil Merit, Leo Tolstoy International Gold Medal, WISE Prize for Education among others.
In both 2014 and 2017, he was named in Fortune Magazine's List of the World's 50 Greatest Leaders. He was also recognized by Ashoka as one of the 'global greats' and was a founding member of its Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship. He was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in the 2010 New Year Honours for services in tackling poverty and empowering the poor in Bangladesh and globally.
The many honorary degrees he received include those from Princeton University, the University of Oxford, Columbia University and Yale University.
In an interview for the Creating Emerging Markets project at the Harvard Business School, Abed revealed his strong belief that businesses can positively impact society, that "you can do good also by doing business."Fazle Hasan Abed#cite%20note-5|Fazle Hasan Abed#cite%20note-6|
In August 2019, Abed retired as the chairperson of BRAC Bangladesh and BRAC International, and took on the position of the Chair Emeritus. Fazle Hasan Abed#cite%20note-7|

Early life

After passing intermediate from Dhaka College in 1954, Abed left home at the age of 18 to attend University of Glasgow, where, in an effort to break away from tradition and do something radically different, he studied naval architecture. He realized there was little work in ship building in East Pakistan and a career in Naval Architecture would make returning home difficult. With that in mind, Abed joined the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants in London, completing his professional education in 1962.
Abed returned to East Pakistan to join Shell Oil Company and quickly rose to head its finance division. His time at Shell exposed Abed to the inner workings of a large conglomerate and provided him with insight into corporate management, which would become invaluable to him later in life.
It was during his time at Shell that the devastating cyclone of 1970 hit the south and south-eastern coastal regions of the country, killing 300,000 people. The cyclone had a profound effect on Abed. In the face of such devastation, he said the comforts and perks of a corporate executive's life ceased to have any attraction for him. Together with friends, Abed created HELP, an organisation that provided relief and rehabilitation to the worst affected in the island of Manpura, which had lost three-quarters of its population in the disaster.
Soon after, Bangladesh's own struggle for independence from Pakistan began and circumstances forced Abed to leave the country. He found refuge in the United Kingdom, where he set up Action Bangladesh to lobby the governments of Europe for his country's independence.

Formation of BRAC

When the war ended in December 1971, Abed sold his flat in London and returned to the newly independent Bangladesh to find his country in ruins. In addition, hundreds of refugees who had sought shelter in India during the war had started to return home. Their relief and rehabilitation called for urgent efforts, and Abed decided to use the funds he had generated from selling his flat to initiate his own such organisation to deal with the long-term task of improving the living conditions of the rural poor. He selected the remote region of Sulla in northeastern Bangladesh to start his work, and this work led to the non-governmental organisation known as BRAC in 1972.
Although the name 'BRAC' does not represent an acronym, the organisation was formerly known as the Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee and then as the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee.
In a span of only three decades, BRAC has grown to become one of the largest development organisations in the world in terms of the scale and diversity of its interventions. As BRAC grew, Abed ensured that it continued to target the landless poor, particularly women, a large percentage of whom live below the poverty line with little or no access to resources or conventional development efforts.
BRAC now operates in all 64 districts of Bangladesh through development interventions that range from education, healthcare, microfinance, skills, human rights, agriculture and enterprise development. It is now considered the largest non-profit in the world – both by employees and people served.
In 2002, BRAC went international by taking its range of development interventions to Afghanistan. Since then, BRAC has expanded to a total of 10 countries across Asia and Africa, successfully adapting its unique integrated development model across varying geographic and socioeconomic contexts.

Professional positions

Abed held the following positions:
He was admitted to the hospital in late November on account of breathing problems and physical weakness. He died at the Apollo Hospital in the capital on Friday, December 20, at 08:28 pm. He was undergoing treatment for a malignant brain tumor. At the time of his death, he was 83 years old. He is survived by a wife, a daughter, a son and three grandchildren.