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Rahena Begum is the head teacher/principal of OBAT’s Sardar Bahadur Nagar School.The  school has 450 students enrolled in it; this is the highest number of students in all of the seven schools of OBAT. Rahena Begum has worked as a teacher for the NGO, Concern Worldwide for 20 years. Now, some of the students she taught are serving as teachers in her school. Rahena Begum enjoys a great reputation as a friendly and amiable co-worker and an effective manager of...

Twenty one year old Zafar Ali studies at the Victoria University of Bangladesh in the B.B.A department. He is also a volunteer for OBAT Helpers and teaches the destitute students who live in different slums or camps.  Zafar’s parents were able to get him through high school where his diligence got him stellar grades. Zafar feels that without his parents’ moral and financial support, he could not have gotten that far. After high school, he tried to get admission into...

Humayun is from the city of Khalispur in Khulna. He is the Head Teacher of OBAT Primary school as well as the project officer for Khulna. Humayun also works as the secretary of SPGRC (Stranded Pakistanis General Repatriation Committee), Khalispur branch and the secretary of Khalispur Non Local Relief committee. We are very thankful to him for his support and for his all hard work behind making OBAT’s projects in Khulna a success. ...

Sohail Akhter Khan lives in Chittagong, Bangladesh and is the Program Manager for OBAT. Prior to working with OBAT, Sohail had worked with Concern Worldwide, an international charity for 22 years. His core area of focus was always, Education though he is also experienced in Disaster Management. He has also worked with UNICEF and various other Government programs and received training from these organizations during the course of this period. Due to his involvement with many nonprofits, Sohail has written articles...

The Spirit and Place festival was accepting blog entries centered around the theme “play.” Here’s the link to our entry : http://spiritandplace.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/just-play-with-or-without/   ...

Born in Geneva Camp, Dhaka, Shahzada Hussain is twenty two years old. He is the eldest in a family of three boys. His father, a rickshaw driver struggles to make ends meet for his family. Educating their three children is daily struggle for his parents who were able to get Shahzada through elementary school. Shahzada worked hard and his will to never give up was able to get him to high school and then to College. Infused by the spirit...

Thank you, Mohammad Wasim Khan, for being a valued OBAT student. Wasim’s father sells ice cream to support his family. His earnings, though, are not sufficient to feed the family three times a day. The family of eight lives in a squalid camp at Rangpur. To improve the wretched living conditions of his family, Wasim started studying at the OBAT tutoring center in 2005 and was able to pass his middle school exam due to the help he received there. Emboldened...

Up until last year, OBAT’s mission was centered mainly on helping the stranded Bihari’s eking out a miserable living in camps in Bangladesh since 1972. Since the last seven years, OBAT has been trying to reconstruct and reform their lives by empowering them with education, income earning opportunities and offering them basic amenities of life. Being based in Indianapolis, however, it was hard to overlook the poverty and the issues stemming from it, locally. We knew that while the poverty...

Shazia feels that in the society in which she lives, girls are considered a curse. Shazia is the eldest of three sisters and lives in a rented house in Halishaher. Out of the mere sixty-five dollars that her father brings home as income every month, thirty-three dollars are used to pay for the rent of the tin and bamboo shack they live in. Shazia was able to complete her studies till grade nine with the help of her uncle. However,...

Syed Zakwan Barkati :- Syed Zakwan Barkati is the Finance Director of OBAT and has been with the organization since its inception. Zakwan also acts  as the principal liaison with OBAT’s partnering non profit, ISDCM, in Bangladesh. He is a business man by profession but he is devoted to helping the community around him. He works  as a volunteer for OBAT and for that we are truly grateful to him.   Imamul Huq Siddiqi: – Mr. Imamul Huq Siddiqi is also a business...