By Datin Paduka Marina Mahathir
In 2008 you may recall that I visited Bangladesh. During that trip I made a special visit to a new and exciting project called the Asian University for Women. I've just come back from another visit and am thrilled to report that it is indeed blossoming.
At the entrance of the present AUW campus in Chittagong city.Last Tuesday I, along with a plane load of others involved with the AUW, took the short flight from Dhaka to Chittagong to visit the campus. From just one building when I first went, it's now expanded to four buildings housing classes, dorms, cafeteria, a library and a shop. The girls too had increased in number, from about 120 in the preparatory Access Academy in 2008 to over 400 from Access Academy through to second year undergraduates. The curriculum too, after some hiccups, had been refined and the girls were studying, in a more organised fashion, degrees such as Politics, Philosophy and Economics. (Although the AUW offers a liberal arts degree, it does also teach science subjects such as Chemistry.)
The crowd at the groundbreaking ceremony for the AUW campusWe also had the opportunity to attend the groundbreaking of the AUW campus outside Chittagong where the first building will be built and ready in two years' time. Under a large gossamer-like tent, various luminaries such as the newly-appointed Chancellor Cherie Blair, the architect Moshe Safdie and the President of the University of Western Ontario, Prof Amit Chakma (who had been born in the Chittagong hill tracts) spoke on their hopes for this wonderful vision for women's education.And the vision is already showing results. Over and over again, in the classes we attended, at special presentations and at the AUW symposium back in Dhaka, the students showed us what education can do for girls who once could only dream of it.
At lunch, five of the girls from the Art of the Personal Essay class got up to talk about how they came to AUW and what it means to them.In a presentation on personal essays, five girls got up to talk about their lives before and after coming to AUW. Parwana comes from a very remote part of Afghanistan ("Taliban country") and she talked about how coming to Chittagong has meant the world to her. She was determined to do well not just for herself but for her mother, her sisters, her aunts and all the other women who didn't have the opportunity to do so back home. She was indeed growing from being a silkworm to a butterfly.The style of teaching obviously was part of what was building the girls' confidence. We sat in on a class on world literature. In the first place, the curriculum was impressive. That day the girls were discussing Naguib Mahfouz's The Arabian Nights and Days. They were not shy to discuss what the texts meant, what the motivations of the characters were and even more to disagree with one another. I don't recall ever seeing our students at home being quite so lively and forthcoming with their opinions.During lunch one group of girls presented a research project on infant undernutrition. During their holidays they had interviewed dozens of mothers in their home villages to ask them about what they fed their infants and what their beliefs were about nutrition. Deepa, a Nepalese second-year student, presented their findings in a lively style, asking us whether we knew what beliefs about the different foods were. Then all of them submitted to questions from the audience. And not for a minute were any of them anything but confident in their answers.Similarly two days later at the symposium in Dhaka , which all the students attended along with many delegates from Dhaka and abroad, a group of Sri Lankan students presented a moving account of the research they had conducted and project they had conducted on peacebuilding in their country after the war.When the war in Sri Lanka ended, the Tamil, Singhalese and Muslim Sri Lankan girls at AUW found themselves in a strange situation. While the Singhalese girls celebrated, the others mourned. Tensions mounted when they saw these differences but curiosity was also aroused as to why they should respond so differently. They started having moderated discussions about the issue and found that they all knew very little about one another's backgrounds and how their own communities had experienced the war. Many realised that they only knew about each other's communities from the media and were shocked to find that much of what they thought they knew were untrue.
Sri Lankan students from three communities presented their project 'Moving Beyond Conflict'Having made this discovery, the girls didn't want to stop there. They decided to embark on a project to build bridges between their communities back home over the holidays. Back in Colombo they sought out experts and people who had experienced the war from different points of view. Then they set out to a village with both Singhalese and Tamil inhabitants to see what they could do.They started off by organising a cricket match! As in much of South Asia, cricket is a religion in Sri Lanka so if there was anything that could bring people together, that was it. And along with some other programmes they conducted, it started that one village on the road to peacebuilding between the different communities.Nobody could have been unmoved by the Sri Lankan presentation. And it really represented what AUW is all about, bringing people together for education and in the process teaching them about similarities and differences, and that there are many different ways to look at the same issue.Throughout the next 2 days the students showed how much being at AUW has instilled knowledge and confidence in them. At every session, they stood up to ask questions of the speakers, regardless of whether they were leading experts in their field or government officials. Their questions were to the point, fearless and sharp. They were also not at all shy to go up to any of the adults present to ask questions, seek an opinion or just to say hello.During my first visit two years ago I had listened to a presentation by Dola, a Bangladeshi girl who wanted to be an artist. This time a smiling girl came up to me to remind me of my visit, and it was Dola, now in the 2nd year.
Dola, whom I first met in 2008.After my last visit and my blog posting about it, one of the students, Jyoti Shresta from Nepal, had written to tell me that I had gotten someone's name wrong. This time I was delighted to have a slim pretty girl ask me if I remembered her email.And over and over again, girls I had met on my first visit came up to say hello and take photos with me. I really was tearing up to see how well they were doing.AUW is growing from strength to strength. They now have girls from 12 countries including about 20 from Afghanistan and two from Palestine. The provost of the university, Dr Mary Sansalone, told an interesting story about the two Palestinians. Ever since they arrived at Access Academy, they had kept to themselves and not mixed very much with the other girls. The teachers were perplexed by this problem and although they tried many different ways, could not quite break through to what the problem was.
Bayyan and Haneen from Palestine (West Bank).Then at the groundbreaking ceremony, the two girls met Moshe Safdie the architect who has designed the masterplan for the AUW campus. Safdie is a Canadian citizen who was originally Palestinian (and Jewish). But for the two girls, the fact that he was Palestinian and had designed their university was enough. Suddenly they opened up, spent a lot of time talking to him and was smiling and talking to everyone else. And interestingly, they started talking about doing a similar project to the Sri Lankan one back home. From a little seed...
Prof Yunus, Nobel laureate, always an inspiring person.Of course the AUW symposium was not the only thing I did in Dhaka. No visit to the Bangladeshi capital could be complete without a visit to the Nobel laureate Prof Mohammad Yunus of Grameen Bank. You may have heard that Prof Yunus is going through some legal problems right now, being accused of many things related to the Grameen businesses he started. It is sad and distracting because Grameen has really put Bangladesh on the world map. But the Prof is handling it with equanimity and happy that so many of those in town for the symposium went to visit him (with some notable exceptions I must say).There are apparently plans afoot to send Malaysian students to AUW in the future. I think this would be good but I hope the scholarships will be reserved for those most deserving, from those who really would not have been able to get a university education. I know we have many universities here but AUW does provide some extra value in terms of the exposure to different cultures and a liberal arts education that you really cannot get here. There are also possibilities for AUW students to come to Malaysia for internships and study visits as well, which would also benefit both ways.(Those of you who follow me on Twitter would have also followed my entire trip in real time. Some really great speakers at the symposium especially Dr Hans Rosling who is brilliant at explaining statistics about global health in an entertaining way, and Sunita Narain who talked passionately about climate change from a human rights point of view.)
Joshua Lopez said...
Really Inspiring and in such places like this, a need for a gender based university. At times i wander what's the need for gender based education in developing countries and fully developed countries. We have a very famous academician here that founded a private school for girls only, yes she has made her mark in education but i find it hard to understand the need for gender based Schools/Universities.
MarinaM said...
Joshua, there are many reasons for an all-women's university. In many developing countries, especially in very conservative ones like those in South Asia, girls would not get any education at all if it weren't for single-sex schools and universities. The parents would only be willing to let their daughters go if it is a single-sex environment.Secondly, we all know that no country can develop if girls and women are not educated. There are many more opportunities for boys and men to get an education than there are for girls so it is important to provide these special facilities for girls. Nowadays many countries provide good access to primary and secondary education for girls. What's still missing is tertiary education so this is where AUW comes in.Thirdly there have been many studies that show that girls do better in single-sex schools than in coed schools. Although conversely boys do better in coed than single-sex schools. So there is an argument for providing a safe space for girls to blossom on their own.
In 2008 you may recall that I visited Bangladesh. During that trip I made a special visit to a new and exciting project called the Asian University for Women. I've just come back from another visit and am thrilled to report that it is indeed blossoming.
At the entrance of the present AUW campus in Chittagong city.Last Tuesday I, along with a plane load of others involved with the AUW, took the short flight from Dhaka to Chittagong to visit the campus. From just one building when I first went, it's now expanded to four buildings housing classes, dorms, cafeteria, a library and a shop. The girls too had increased in number, from about 120 in the preparatory Access Academy in 2008 to over 400 from Access Academy through to second year undergraduates. The curriculum too, after some hiccups, had been refined and the girls were studying, in a more organised fashion, degrees such as Politics, Philosophy and Economics. (Although the AUW offers a liberal arts degree, it does also teach science subjects such as Chemistry.)
The crowd at the groundbreaking ceremony for the AUW campusWe also had the opportunity to attend the groundbreaking of the AUW campus outside Chittagong where the first building will be built and ready in two years' time. Under a large gossamer-like tent, various luminaries such as the newly-appointed Chancellor Cherie Blair, the architect Moshe Safdie and the President of the University of Western Ontario, Prof Amit Chakma (who had been born in the Chittagong hill tracts) spoke on their hopes for this wonderful vision for women's education.And the vision is already showing results. Over and over again, in the classes we attended, at special presentations and at the AUW symposium back in Dhaka, the students showed us what education can do for girls who once could only dream of it.
At lunch, five of the girls from the Art of the Personal Essay class got up to talk about how they came to AUW and what it means to them.In a presentation on personal essays, five girls got up to talk about their lives before and after coming to AUW. Parwana comes from a very remote part of Afghanistan ("Taliban country") and she talked about how coming to Chittagong has meant the world to her. She was determined to do well not just for herself but for her mother, her sisters, her aunts and all the other women who didn't have the opportunity to do so back home. She was indeed growing from being a silkworm to a butterfly.The style of teaching obviously was part of what was building the girls' confidence. We sat in on a class on world literature. In the first place, the curriculum was impressive. That day the girls were discussing Naguib Mahfouz's The Arabian Nights and Days. They were not shy to discuss what the texts meant, what the motivations of the characters were and even more to disagree with one another. I don't recall ever seeing our students at home being quite so lively and forthcoming with their opinions.During lunch one group of girls presented a research project on infant undernutrition. During their holidays they had interviewed dozens of mothers in their home villages to ask them about what they fed their infants and what their beliefs were about nutrition. Deepa, a Nepalese second-year student, presented their findings in a lively style, asking us whether we knew what beliefs about the different foods were. Then all of them submitted to questions from the audience. And not for a minute were any of them anything but confident in their answers.Similarly two days later at the symposium in Dhaka , which all the students attended along with many delegates from Dhaka and abroad, a group of Sri Lankan students presented a moving account of the research they had conducted and project they had conducted on peacebuilding in their country after the war.When the war in Sri Lanka ended, the Tamil, Singhalese and Muslim Sri Lankan girls at AUW found themselves in a strange situation. While the Singhalese girls celebrated, the others mourned. Tensions mounted when they saw these differences but curiosity was also aroused as to why they should respond so differently. They started having moderated discussions about the issue and found that they all knew very little about one another's backgrounds and how their own communities had experienced the war. Many realised that they only knew about each other's communities from the media and were shocked to find that much of what they thought they knew were untrue.
Sri Lankan students from three communities presented their project 'Moving Beyond Conflict'Having made this discovery, the girls didn't want to stop there. They decided to embark on a project to build bridges between their communities back home over the holidays. Back in Colombo they sought out experts and people who had experienced the war from different points of view. Then they set out to a village with both Singhalese and Tamil inhabitants to see what they could do.They started off by organising a cricket match! As in much of South Asia, cricket is a religion in Sri Lanka so if there was anything that could bring people together, that was it. And along with some other programmes they conducted, it started that one village on the road to peacebuilding between the different communities.Nobody could have been unmoved by the Sri Lankan presentation. And it really represented what AUW is all about, bringing people together for education and in the process teaching them about similarities and differences, and that there are many different ways to look at the same issue.Throughout the next 2 days the students showed how much being at AUW has instilled knowledge and confidence in them. At every session, they stood up to ask questions of the speakers, regardless of whether they were leading experts in their field or government officials. Their questions were to the point, fearless and sharp. They were also not at all shy to go up to any of the adults present to ask questions, seek an opinion or just to say hello.During my first visit two years ago I had listened to a presentation by Dola, a Bangladeshi girl who wanted to be an artist. This time a smiling girl came up to me to remind me of my visit, and it was Dola, now in the 2nd year.
Dola, whom I first met in 2008.After my last visit and my blog posting about it, one of the students, Jyoti Shresta from Nepal, had written to tell me that I had gotten someone's name wrong. This time I was delighted to have a slim pretty girl ask me if I remembered her email.And over and over again, girls I had met on my first visit came up to say hello and take photos with me. I really was tearing up to see how well they were doing.AUW is growing from strength to strength. They now have girls from 12 countries including about 20 from Afghanistan and two from Palestine. The provost of the university, Dr Mary Sansalone, told an interesting story about the two Palestinians. Ever since they arrived at Access Academy, they had kept to themselves and not mixed very much with the other girls. The teachers were perplexed by this problem and although they tried many different ways, could not quite break through to what the problem was.
Bayyan and Haneen from Palestine (West Bank).Then at the groundbreaking ceremony, the two girls met Moshe Safdie the architect who has designed the masterplan for the AUW campus. Safdie is a Canadian citizen who was originally Palestinian (and Jewish). But for the two girls, the fact that he was Palestinian and had designed their university was enough. Suddenly they opened up, spent a lot of time talking to him and was smiling and talking to everyone else. And interestingly, they started talking about doing a similar project to the Sri Lankan one back home. From a little seed...
Prof Yunus, Nobel laureate, always an inspiring person.Of course the AUW symposium was not the only thing I did in Dhaka. No visit to the Bangladeshi capital could be complete without a visit to the Nobel laureate Prof Mohammad Yunus of Grameen Bank. You may have heard that Prof Yunus is going through some legal problems right now, being accused of many things related to the Grameen businesses he started. It is sad and distracting because Grameen has really put Bangladesh on the world map. But the Prof is handling it with equanimity and happy that so many of those in town for the symposium went to visit him (with some notable exceptions I must say).There are apparently plans afoot to send Malaysian students to AUW in the future. I think this would be good but I hope the scholarships will be reserved for those most deserving, from those who really would not have been able to get a university education. I know we have many universities here but AUW does provide some extra value in terms of the exposure to different cultures and a liberal arts education that you really cannot get here. There are also possibilities for AUW students to come to Malaysia for internships and study visits as well, which would also benefit both ways.(Those of you who follow me on Twitter would have also followed my entire trip in real time. Some really great speakers at the symposium especially Dr Hans Rosling who is brilliant at explaining statistics about global health in an entertaining way, and Sunita Narain who talked passionately about climate change from a human rights point of view.)
Joshua Lopez said...
Really Inspiring and in such places like this, a need for a gender based university. At times i wander what's the need for gender based education in developing countries and fully developed countries. We have a very famous academician here that founded a private school for girls only, yes she has made her mark in education but i find it hard to understand the need for gender based Schools/Universities.
MarinaM said...
Joshua, there are many reasons for an all-women's university. In many developing countries, especially in very conservative ones like those in South Asia, girls would not get any education at all if it weren't for single-sex schools and universities. The parents would only be willing to let their daughters go if it is a single-sex environment.Secondly, we all know that no country can develop if girls and women are not educated. There are many more opportunities for boys and men to get an education than there are for girls so it is important to provide these special facilities for girls. Nowadays many countries provide good access to primary and secondary education for girls. What's still missing is tertiary education so this is where AUW comes in.Thirdly there have been many studies that show that girls do better in single-sex schools than in coed schools. Although conversely boys do better in coed than single-sex schools. So there is an argument for providing a safe space for girls to blossom on their own.
Joshua Lopez said...
Thankyou Datin Paduka for sharing & Congrats on being one of the great women behind the establishment of this University.
MarinaM said...
Joshua, I cannot take credit for AUW, I am only helping to promote it. The founder of AUW interestingly enough is a man, Kamal Ahmed, a Bangladeshi-American. But we have ascertained that he was greatly influenced by his grandmother and mother, hence his total belief and commitment to women's education.
Thankyou Datin Paduka for sharing & Congrats on being one of the great women behind the establishment of this University.
MarinaM said...
Joshua, I cannot take credit for AUW, I am only helping to promote it. The founder of AUW interestingly enough is a man, Kamal Ahmed, a Bangladeshi-American. But we have ascertained that he was greatly influenced by his grandmother and mother, hence his total belief and commitment to women's education.
