Speaking of Brighter Dawns and access to sanitation, a brief update on the Wes student/humanitarian work front: Tasmiha Khan ’12, founder of the Brighter Dawns charity and winner of a $10,000 David Project for Peace grant, is the subject of a Chicago Tribune article extensively chronicling the Wes senior’s experiences with humanitarian work in Bangladesh. Congrats, Tasmiha—this is pretty freaking excellent.
Headlined “Chicago woman helps bring clean water to residents in Bangladesh,” much of the article focuses on the personal origins of Khan’s efforts in Bangladesh:
Khan and her aunt took a detour through an impoverished area and were invited into several homes where large families crowded into abysmal living quarters without running water or electricity.
Sanitation was poor, and women had to walk miles to get drinking water that was not clean and sometimes had toxic levels of arsenic. Khan learned from public health officials that more than 100,000 children in Bangladesh die each year from intestinal diseases linked to drinking unclean water.
When Khan returned to school, she felt compelled to do something.
And details on what Brighter Dawns has accomplished thus far, and where Khan sees herself in after graduation:
[Khan] said her organization distributed more than 1,000 sanitary kits, which included soap, sanitary napkins and cleaning agents. They also held more training sessions on proper hygiene as well as talked about family planning.Khan said Brighter Dawns is providing a small stipend for three women who have been teaching other women about proper sanitation and monitoring how the residents are using the wells and latrines.
She said that when she graduates next year, she wants to return to Chicago to join the public health sector and also continue her work in Bangladesh.
Read the full account of Khan’s work here, or hit up an Argus profile from last spring here, or learn more about Brighter Dawns at tonight’s meeting in Exley.