Word: ahmad
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Dacca, the capital of Bangladesh, Ahmad grew increasingly concerned about the many illiterate children who lived in the city's slums and worked as domestics for wealthy families. At the age of 14, he started a school to teach these children to read, converting several vacant car garages into classrooms, hiring six university students as teachers and enrolling 200 students...
...Ahmad's school received intense opposition immediately after opening in March, 1979. The families who employed the children were reluctant to have their young workers waste time in school, he says, and local authorities charged that the students made too much noise and were a health risk to the area...
...Ahmad says the community resistance increased his enthusiasm for the project. "If nobody had opposed me, I probably would have lost interest," he says. Classes had to be moved to an open field where they were conducted for several months...
...raise money for his school, Ahmad targeted various overseas organizations from Canada to Italy. He raised enough money to build a bamboo schoolhouse, where the school still runs today...
When he arrived as a sophomore at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, Ahmad says he was shocked to find a "very low level of knowledge about the Third World in this country." He began Exeter's Third World Society to promote awareness of development issues among students...