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NEWS
Sir Fazle Hasan Abed KCMG, the
2015 World Food Prize Laureate and
founder of the BRAC development
organisation, focused on ‘Empowering
the poor in the fight against hunger’
at the annual Bledisloe Memorial
Lecture (11 December 2015).
Sir Fazle Hasan Abed opened with
experiences from his own life; experiences
which compelled him to leave his
corporate oil industry career behind and
dedicate his life to eradicating poverty,
hunger, illiteracy, and exploitation in
Bangladesh. Thus the non-governmental
organisation BRAC was born.
Founded in 1972, BRAC introduced
agricultural schemes, literacy programmes,
health care and family planning, and
credit support for landless farmers –
encouraging them to invest in new seeds,
fertiliser, and farming technologies.
Bangladesh has now achieved self-
sufficiency in food production, though its
population has more than doubled since
independence, to reportedly 166 million.
One of the biggest challenges was fertility
and infant mortality rates. Rural women
had so little confidence that their children
would live to adulthood (one in four children
died before their fifth birthday) that they
were actively choosing to have more
children. Through the introduction of a
national immunisation programme and
the use of education and family planning,
the BRAC were able to bring about a
steep decline in fertility; from an average
of 6.4 children per woman to 2.1.
Sir Fazle found that, in large part, the key to
change was the empowerment of women.
Village schools run by local housewives
were opened across Bangladesh and
an entire generation, more than 11
million children, were empowered to
take care of their own needs and make
changes from the bottom up – a local
initiative on an international scale.
Awarded the 2015 World Food Prize
Laureate for his life-long dedication to
raising the poorest out of poverty, Sir
Fazle wholeheartedly believes that,
“defeating hunger does not depend
only on the science of food production,
but requires us to address the problem
of powerlessness among the poor.”
Cereals Challenge
Elle Pace, Mollie Phipps, Rhys Jackson, and Kieran Vallance took part in the
Cereals Challenge 2016, competing against five other universities
and colleges to grow the best pea crop, and win that all-important
£1,000 cash prize and £500 bursary.
For the first time in its seven year history, the
Cereal Challenge was a pea crop – to mark
2016 as the International Year of the Pulses.
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Left to right: RAU Vice-Chancellor, Professor Chris
Gaskell, Sir Fazle Hasan Abed (centre right), and
Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Professor Paul Davies
Rhys Jackson, Kieran Vallance, Mollie Phipps, and Elle Pace
The fight
against
hunger