AUW Bangladesh welcomes students from Balochistan (Pakistan)

[Bilal9]

AUW welcomes students from Balochistan (Pakistan): AUW has offered admission and scholarship to 10 outstanding emerging leaders from small towns and villages in Balochistan.

AUW Founder, Kamal Ahmad, met with some of the Baloch students as they prepare to leave for Chittagong.

Outstanding students from Afghanistan by far outnumber all other foreign students at AUW, which is by design.

Asian University for Women is the first of its kind: an independent, regional institution dedicated to excellence, women’s education and leadership development – global in outlook, but rooted in the contexts and aspirations of the people of Asia.

Located in Chittagong, Bangladesh, AUW exists to educate and empower a rising network of women leaders through the transformative power of an American-style liberal arts and sciences education. Open to women from all walks of life, AUW particularly encourages women who are the first in their family to get a university education.

AUW has a brand new Campus in Chittagong, Bangladesh

AUW is based in Chittagong, Bangladesh. It is a short walk or ride away from many shops, cafes, restaurants, parks, and places of worship including mosques, temples, and churches. Visitors may refer to our Welcome Packet for local recommendations on things to do, places to see, and tips for safety and security.

Rendering of the Permanent Campus

The permanent campus of AUW is planned for a beautiful 140-acre site within the Chittagong city limits, just north of the Foy’s Lake recreational area. The site consists of rolling hills, deep valleys, permanent and intermittent streams, and spectacular views toward the Bay of Bengal and the city. The site lies six kilometers north of the commercial center, approximately eight kilometers from Chittagong University, fifteen kilometers from the city’s new international airport, and is immediately adjacent to the Foy’s Lake recreational area. The land surrounding the AUW site represents one of the last undeveloped areas of Chittagong’s unique hilly landscape.

Much of the AUW site today is covered only with grasses and low bushes due to local harvesting of its vegetation. Yet, it can support a lush growth of trees, shrubs, and groundcover. One of the goals of the AUW campus design is to revegetate these hills as a strategy for preventing erosion and a means to re-establish a native ecology that is under threat throughout South Eastern Bangladesh. Part of AUW’s mandate is to demonstrate through its design and construction a more environmentally sustainable way of building. By locating in one of Bangladesh’s unique and endangered landscapes, and by applying local building traditions coupled with new technologies and design innovations, AUW has an opportunity to offer the country and region a new paradigm.

Rendering of the Permanent Campus

AUW students come from all across Asia, from the rural highlands of India and the deltas of Vietnam and Bangladesh to the urban centers of Malaysia and Indonesia. They represent over 35 ethnicities, speak over 25 different languages, hold different religious beliefs, and see the world through different eyes. Although diverse in background, AUW students are united in their passion to innovate the economic, social, and political landscapes of their communities.

AUW students are curious learners, entrepreneurial thinkers, and hopeful spirits. They live and study together, expanding their worldviews and embracing cross-cultural diversity as a strength—not a cause for division or strife.

The Mission and Vision of AUW is therefore to build cooperation across all Asian economies by reducing those differences that divide us culturally, politically and economically,



Our Current Students:

Country	Total
Afghanistan	131
Bangladesh	527
Bhutan	29
Cambodia	7
China	2
East Timor	9
India	20
Indonesia	4
Laos	6
Myanmar	93
Nepal	37
Pakistan	17
Senegal	1
Sri Lanka	29
Syria	15
Vietnam	13
Yemen	5
Total	954

Pathways for Promise aims to identify and educate highly talented women from underserved communities. AUW acknowledges that circumstance is not an indicator of potential, and therefore has established Pathways for Promise as a flexible preparatory program with the ability to sufficiently equip any woman for undergraduate education. In Pathways for Promise, women who have not previously had access to high-quality English-language or mathematics training are able to enjoy an additional year of pre-university preparation in advance of the one-year Access Academy and three-year Undergraduate Program.

Students who have great potential but limited opportunity to pursue higher education are ideal candidates for Pathways for Promise. All Pathways for Promise students are first in their family to enter university, and otherwise represent difficult backgrounds, including:

• Daughters of microfinance borrowers;
• Historically neglected ethnic minorities;
• Ready-made garment factory workers;
• Tea estate workers;
• Refugees and internally displaced persons; and
• Women from poorer socio-economic strata.

Through Pathways for Promise, AUW aims to help prepare women from the most oppressed communities that suffer from inadequate secondary education facilities to prepare for entry into AUW through up two years of preparatory course work on campus.

Pathways for Promise is only offered to those who are invited under a sponsored program. Organizations that are interested to learn more about Pathways for Promise or nominate an applicant may also contact the AUW Office of Admissions.

Curriculum

Pathways for Promise teaches students to communicate in English effectively and confidently through interactive teaching methods and an active curriculum. The program:

• Focuses on English-language acquisition;
• Is taught by the best local and international instructors from Canada, UK, and USA;
• Offers additional training in mathematics, computing, martial arts, classical dance, and leadership;
• Requires approximately 20 hours of class time per week;
• Offers structured independent reading time, group study sessions, and peer and professional mentorship;
• Offers opportunities for community service and extracurricular activities.

These qualities unite to provide a pathway toward holistic development and preparation for Access Academy. For a detailed overview of the Pathways for Promise curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment methodology, please review the AUW Pathways For Promise Brochure and the AUW Academic Bulletin.

Recent News Coverage of Pathways for Promise:

Dresses to degrees: university opens its doors to Bangladesh garment workers (The Guardian)

Fashion’s deadliest disaster prompts Bangladeshi workers to opt for university (Reuters)

This University Is Helping Garment Workers Become Factory Owners (Glamour)

 

[Maula Jatt]

I think you should add Balochistan,Pakistan in the title cause thier are 2 Balochistans one in Iran another in Pakistan

 

[Bilal9]

KoreanBhai - our Korean-Bangladeshi Vlogger went to AUW on Korean Culture day (featuring KPOP, Food) for the students. Shows the fun part of campus life, which is like any other int'l university. He is speaking in Bengali the whole time...

 

[Bilal9]

I think you should add Balochistan,Pakistan in the title cause thier are 2 Balochistans one in Iran another in Pakistan

Done. Thanks brother.

 

[srshkmr]

Student exchange and foreign students are a boon, they spread the good word about the country and their traditions

 

[Bilal9]

Syngenta (the life sciences company) offered two scholarships to AUW. The awardees talk about the difference these scholarships made in their lives.

These female students are the first ones in their family to receive an education (as always, these types of students are prioritized for admission at AUW).

 

[bluesky]

KoreanBhai - our Korean-Bangladeshi Vlogger went to AUW on Korean Culture day (featuring KPOP, Food) for the students. Shows the fun part of campus life, which is like any other int'l university. He is speaking in Bengali the whole time...

No other period of life can be as good as the University campus life. I am surprised to see the AUW campus. So many students from so many countries.

It is another kind of United Nations Organization.

 

[Bilal9]

On this Nowruz, Remember Afghanistan​

Posted on March 21, 2022

“The bloody massacre in Bangladesh quickly covered over the memory of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the assassination of Allende drowned out the groans of Bangladesh, the war in the Sinai Desert made people forget Allende, the Cambodian massacre made people forget Sinai, and so on and so forth until ultimately everyone lets everything be forgotten.”

Milan Kundera in The Book of Laughter & Forgetting

Yesterday, on the eve of Nowruz, I met with two of our Afghan alumnae – Khatima and Najia, in the outskirts of Islamabad. I had first met Najia years ago when she was in eighth or ninth grade. I had become curious about the source of an extraordinary group of Afghan students at AUW. They all came from a school called Marefat located some hour and half outside of Kabul city in deep Hazara country. I had gone to see its headmaster, Aziz Royesh, to learn about him (a Mujahadeen fighter who was a Fellow at Yale) and see some its students first hand in their own setting.

Once in Marefat, I found myself addressing hundreds of students in an elaborate program. That’s how Najia and I had first met. Now, Najia who on graduation from AUW worked with a UN agency in Kabul has left everything behind in Kabul and found refuge in Pakistan. Here she waits for a bridge to another country where she and her ailing mother would pursue yet another chapter in their lives.

But those bridges have become shorter in supply. As Najia and her mother wait in their own Casablanca, the world’s attention has already shifted. A colleague in Switzerland whom I had earlier implored to help mobilize resources to help AUW arrange the education of 500 Afghan women (171 of whom are already in Chittagong) wrote two days ago: “Fundraising to support the educational opportunities of Afghan women is difficult at the moment in Switzerland and Europe, as the focus of donors is currently on alleviating the plight of Ukrainian refugees”.

On this occasion of Nowruz, I wanted to write and reaffirm AUW’s commitment to all the Khatimas and Najias in Afghanistan: We stand by you, just as we did yesterday and the day before; no shadows will blind your sight from us; AUW will continue its recruitment of new students from Afghanistan uninterrupted; next year, inshallah, we will celebrate Nowruz in Chittagong with all our 500 Afghan students at AUW with every one of the seven symbols of Nowruz – wisdom, beauty, rebirth, power, health, satisfaction and tolerance – still intact.

With that hope and prayer,

Kamal Ahmad

Founder
Asian University for Women

 

[Bilal9]