Light of Hope

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 and 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 practical. She convinced her husband who was a rickshaw puller, to start this business. Somehow that poor couple managed the money and bought a solar system from Grameen Shakti on monthly installment and set their business up. The business went 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. Dell sought their inspiration, imagination and innovation to re-engineer today's learning environments, both in and outside of the classroom. The competition sought to continue to inspire innovative ideas from around the world that would help solve today's biggest issues in education, including those identified in a poll commissioned by Dell about new education models. The poll showed that respondents view a personalized approach to learning as most 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 by 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, Md. Waliullah Bhuiyan and his co-founders, Mr. Nasimul Islam Maruf and Md. Asaduzzaman Shoeb shared their plan with their friends and family. As all of them engineers, they started thinking about how they can use our 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 the skype and discussed the matter. After discussing, they submitted their project to Dell Education Challenge, 2013. Their idea got selected to the top 50. After the final selection, their idea got the third position and they got an invitation letter to Texas. Md. 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 Md. Waliullah's idea was still not on working condition. 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 of schools as our first mission. Today those two of schools are running their multimedia education successfully. One school is in Chittagong and another is in Kishoregonj in Bangladesh. Now they have their project going successfully. They have targeted 4000 schools all over Bangladesh to be multimedia schools.

Project 'PORUA- The Reader'

Light of Hope started their journey with a school project. And now they have another project running called 'PORUA- The Reader'. This is a campaign for collecting books. The goal of this project is to create reader among the poor and neglected children who has thirst for knowledge but 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 organization 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, as they started the journey of our organization from there. 'Porua' team collected almost 200 books in one day and they got a wonderful response. Their campaign went successful and they wanted to spread the campaign countrywide. They opened a Facebook event for collecting books and set our representative in different universities for collecting books. Many organizations like BRAC, Room to Read, Save the Children etc. donated books to this project. rokomari.com donated 200 books. They have 3 years project plan for 'Porua- the Reader' and their target is to set up library in 500 schools.