Archive for Knowledge for Development

Indian couple wins Alternative Nobel Prize

Krishnammal Jagannathan

Krishnammal Jagannathan, 82, and her husband, Sankaralingam, 95, have spent a lifetime fighting for the rights of the deprived, especially the Dalits, the former untouchables, who form the lowest rung of India’s ancient caste ladder.

The couple – named Wednesday among the recipients of the 2008 Right Livelihood Awards, often called the Alternative Nobel Prizes -have ensured over decades that thousands of acres of land were distributed to landless Dalit  Read more...

School feeding programme begins in 5 districts

High school girls taking notes. Suapur, Bangladesh.

School Group Feeding Programme has been introduced in five districts of the country to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) by the year 2010.

The main target of introducing the programme is to reduce number of dropouts in primary schools, ensure quality education, increase number of children in primary schools, combat malnutrition and ensure cent per cent attendance in schools. The  Read more...

Biswa Sahitya Kendra gets UNESCO award

Biswa Sahitya Kendra has been selected for one of UNESCO’s most prestigious awards, the Jan Amos Comenius Medal, for outstanding achievement and innovations in the field of education.

Chairman of Biswa Sahitya Kendra’s trustee board, Prof Abdullah Abu Sayeed will  Read more...

Nobel laureate Yunus blasts Telenor ethics in Bangladesh

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQ030y37uMQ]Norwegian telecom operator Telenor, which recently tightened ethical procedures in Bangladesh, still has sub-contractors there using child labour,  Read more...

Success that takes society into account

Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus founded a bank that has helped 7.5 million beggars and borrowers escape abject poverty in his native Bangladesh.Speaking to about 1800 people this week, he encouraged them to do what they could to change the world by using business techniques to solve everything from poverty to pollution.

“We can create a world where there will be no poor persons at all,” Yunus told students, non- profit organisers and members of the Bangladesh- American Society of Greater Houston.

Yunus recently wrote Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism. In it he suggests that people create businesses with a societal motive, offering health insurance, cheque-cashing services or bank accounts for the  Read more...