Rahman.shaheb

Light of Hope

Company type	Educational Project (Provides and promotes e-education)
Founded	2013
Founder	Md. Waliullah Bhuiyan, Manager at BRAC
Headquarters	Dhaka, Bangladesh
Area served	Bangladesh
Website	lightofhopebd.org

Light of Hope

Introduction

“Light of Hope” is a project created by a team of some enthusiastic people who want to make a change in the education system of Bangladesh. Aim of this organization is to provide e-learning facility to rural schools where there is no electricity. They will provide Laptops, Projectors, Audio Visual e-learning materials to the schools and those will be powered by Solar Energy. They also provides books and essential education materials to those rural students. The founder of this project is Md. Waliullah Bhuiyan,(Manager, BRAC). Nazmul Islam Maruf and Md. Asaduzzaman Shoeb co-founded this project. They both are the assistant professor of Electric and Electronics at AIUB. Now this project has almost 100 active members working on it. There are also other projects under this projects.

History

Inspiration

Back in 2009, Md. Waliullah Bhuiyan, founder of Light of Hope, was working on a rural projet with BRAC in a small village of Patuakhali. In that village, they were talking with a group of women about how they make money for living. As there was no electricity on that 'Chor' area, in the local market some people developed solar energy for electricity. The village people started going to the local market and charge their cell phones with exchange of a small amount. Electricity providers were making profit out of this. So, the women of that area used the idea as it would help them to earn money. Besides, if they place the solar system in their house, electricity would become available in their area and there would be no need to go to the local market to charge their phones. Ambiya Khatun was the pioneer of this issue was the first to apply that idea. She somehow convinced her husband who was a rickshaw puller to start this business as it was worth a try. Somehow the husband and the wife managed the money and bought a solar system from Grameen Shakti on monthly installment and set their business up. The business went successful and they made a good profit out of this. Watching them doing business successfully, many people got involved into this business and the area was being developed gradually. Md. Waliullah Bhuiyan was inspired by this improvement. He said ‘I was amazed and I felt very inspired how those people understood the situation of the market and developed a business. So, prosparity can be brought to that area through the same soler power by which they developed their community. But a problem was still there. There was no school in that Chor area. So, I thought if the families are now earning well, why not build a school here and use the same solar system to run the school. I mean we were planning to set up a multimedia school with a laptop computer and a projector. And the power source would be the solar system. One part of the solar system would cover the electricity needed for school. And other part of the solar system would be used providing electricity and other facilities related to communication in exchange of money which will cover the at least some portion of the school’s expenses. We will also set up a library for each school. So, a simple village woman, Ambiya Khatun, was the inspiration of our work.' So, Md. Waliullah Bhuiyan made the plan of this project and shared it with his two friends Nazmul Islam Maruf and Md. Asaduzzaman Shoeb. They liked the plan and designed the project. But there was financial problem. They did not have enough money to start the project and no one was agreed to sponsor it. So, they were waiting for an opportunity to start their project.

Dell Education Challenge 2013

Dell issued its second Dell Education Challenge in 2013 to university students worldwide. Dell sought their inspiration, imagination and innovation to re-engineer today’s learning environments, both in and outside of the classroom. The competition sought to continue to inspire innovative ideas from around the world that would help solve today’s biggest issues in education, including those identified in a poll commissioned by Dell about new education models. The poll showed that respondents view a personalized approach to learning as most effective.

More than 400 projects were submitted in the last Dell Education Challenge and the winning teams were bringing their ideas to fruition. Grand prize winner, Forward Tutoring, was helping to create more support for individual learning needs and support for students by students via their online platform where credits are earned for volunteering in the community. Those students then redeemed their credits for tutoring from other qualified students. Tutors in turn could earn scholarships and internships from supporting organizations. Dell’s competition was mainly focused on social entrepreneurship.

The founder, Md. Waliullah Bhuiyan and his co-founders, Nazmul Islam Maruf and Md. Asaduzzaman Shoeb shared their plan with their friends and family. As all of them engineers, they started thinking about how they can use our idea in practical field. They did not have enough money to buy equipment like solar panel, laptop, projector etc. At that moment Dell Education Challenge 2013 came up. They were not in different countries at that time. They arranged a meeting on the skype and discussed the matter. After discussing, they submitted their project to Dell Education Challenge, 2013. Their idea got selected to the top 50. After the final selection, their idea got the third position and they got an invitation letter to Texas. Md. Waliullah went to Texas for the final competition. The other participant teams from U.S. and Texas, had already taken their project on pilot phase. But Md. Waliullah's idea was still not on working condition. If they had enough funding, they would start working. So, they won the third position along with the 2500 dollar price.They went for crowed funding over the internet and gathered 4500 dollar. With a total sum of 6000 dollars they started their pilot project targeting two of schools as our first mission. Today those two of schools are running their multimedia education successfully. One school is in Chittagong and another is in Kishoregonj in Bangladesh. Now they have their project going successfully. They have targeted 4000 schools all over Bangladesh to be multimedia schools.

Porua- The Reader
Type of project	Project for collecting books
Location	Dhaka, Bangladesh

Project 'PORUA- The Reader'

Light of Hope began with the school project. Besides, they have another project running. This project is called “Porua”. This is actually a campaign. The goal of this project is to create reader among the poor and neglected children who have thirst for knowledge but cannot afford books. In this Porua campaign, the 'Porua' team members collect books in different ways like they go to different schools and universities to collect books. They mainly ask for primary level story books. They also ask different social organization for donation. For an example, there is an organization in America named Room to Read. They donate books as a social service. Team 'Porua' asked them for donation. Also people who want to donate money can contact with this 'Porua' team. They ran their first campaign on AIUB, as they started the journey of our organization from there. 'Porua' team collected almost 200 books in one day and they got a wonderful response. Their campaign went successful and they wanted to spread the campaign countrywide. They opened a facebook event for collecting books and set our representative in different universities for collecting books. They also talked to many organizations like BRAC, Room to Read, Save the Children etc and collected books from them. rokomari.com donated 200 books. They have 3 years project plan for 'Porua' and their target is to set up library in 500 schools.