Light of Hope
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| Company type | Educational Project (Provides and promotes e-education) |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2013 |
| Founder | Md. Waliullah Bhuiyan |
| Headquarters | , Bangladesh |
Area served | Bangladesh |
| Website | lightofhopebd |
Light of Hope abbreviated as LoH, is a project to make a change in the education system of Bangladesh by providing e-learning facilities to rural schools where there is no electricity. They provide Laptops, Projectors, Audio Visual e-learning materials, Solar systems to those schools which are situated in remote areas where there is no electricity or enough facilities for proper education. They also provide books and essential education materials to students in those remote areas.[1]
The founders of this project are Waliullah Bhuiyan, (Manager, BRAC), Nasimul Islam Maruf and Asaduzzaman Shoeb (assistant professors of Electric and Electronics at AIUB). Now this project has almost 100 active members working on it. There are also some other sub-projects.
In 2014, LoH opened its first solar powered school in Bangladesh[2]
History
Inspiration
Back in 2009, Md. Waliullah Bhuiyan, founder of Light of Hope, was working on a rural project 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, some people from local market developed solar energy for electricity. The village people started going to the local market to charge their cell phones with exchange of an amount of money. Electricity providers were making profit out of this as well as using it for their own works. So, the women of that area used the idea as it could help them to earn some extra money. Ambiya Khatun was the pioneer of this idea. She first applied that idea in practice. She convinced her husband, who was a rickshaw puller, to start this business by buying a solar system on monthly installment and set their business up. The business became 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.
Md. Waliullah Bhuiyan made the plan of this project and shared it with his two friends Nasimul 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.[3] The competition sought to inspire innovative ideas from around the world that would help solve issues in education, including those identified in a poll commissioned by Dell about new education models. The poll showed that respondents viewed a personalized approach to learning to be 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 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, Waliullah Bhuiyan and his co-founders, Maruf and Shoeb shared their plan with their friends and family. As all of them are engineers, they started thinking about how they can use the idea in practical field. Then Dell Education Challenge 2013 came up. They were studying in different countries at that time. They arranged a meeting on Skype and discussed the matter. After discussing, they submitted their project to Dell Education Challenge, 2013. Their idea was selected to the top 50. After the final selection, their idea got the third position and they got an invitation letter to Texas. 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 Waliullah's idea was still not in use. If they had enough funding, they would start working. So, they won the third position along with the 2500 dollar price. They went for crowdfunding over the internet and gathered 4500 dollar. With a total sum of 6000 dollars they started their pilot project targeting two schools as their first mission. Today those two schools are running their multimedia education successfully. One school is in Chittagong and another is in Kishoregonj in Bangladesh. Now they have their project running, they have targeted 4000 schools all over Bangladesh to be multimedia schools.
Project 'PORUA- The Reader'
Light of Hope now they have another project running called 'PORUA- The Reader'.[4] This is a campaign for collecting books. The goal of this project is to create readers among poor children who 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 organizations 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 and collected almost 200 books in one day. Their campaign was successful and they wanted to spread the campaign countrywide. They opened a Facebook event for collecting books and set out representatives in different universities for collecting books. Many organizations like BRAC, Room to Read, Save the Children and others donated books to this project. rokomari.com donated 200 books. They have a 3-year project for 'Porua- the Reader' which aims to create libraries in 500 schools across the country.
References
- ^ Islam, D. M. Ohidul (11 July 2014). "Light of Hope, Increasing Ingenuity in eEducation". Daily Observer.
- ^ "MSc SELECT student's project "Light of Hope" opens first solar powered school in Bangladesh". InnoEnergy (Press release). Retrieved 2017-10-13.
- ^ "Dell Education Challenge to Support and Fund Innovative Learning Approaches". Dell (Press release). Archived from the original on 10 October 2013.
- ^ "Porua- The Reader". INDIEGOGO.
Further reading
- Kahlke, Juliane (13 February 2014). "Strom aus Sonnenenergie für Bangladeschs Schüler" [Electricity from solar energy for Bangladesh's students]. Flensburger Tageblatt (in German).
- Kamaal, Neebiir (9 August 2014). "Spreading the Light of Hope". New Age.
- "Alok Shikkhaloy students portray zeal for mother language". The Daily Star. 21 February 2016.
- "Technology makes lessons easy, entertaining". The Daily Star. 28 March 2017.
- Himadri, Md. Mizanur Rahman (30 September 2018). "A classroom in a backpack". The Daily Star.
- "Waliullah wins young entrepreneurs' award". The Daily Star. 24 October 2018.