BRAC Founder Fazle Abed Receives “Entrepreneur for the World” Award

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25 November 2009 – The first ever “Entrepreneur for the World” Award in the Social Entrepreneur category was awarded to BRAC founder and chairperson Fazle Hasan Abed. He received the award during a ceremony at the World Entrepreneurship Forum held on November 19, 2009 in Lyon, France.

The World Entrepreneurship Forum was established by EMLYON Business School, the leading European business school in entrepreneurship, and KPMG, the leading tax, audit and advisory services company. The Forum is founded on the conviction that the entrepreneur is a creator of wealth and social justice. The World Entrepreneurship Forum awards started in 2008 and 2009 is the first year that the Social Entrepreneur category was included in the awards category.

Patrick Molle, president of EMLYON Business School, and Jean-Luc Decornoy, chairman of KPMG SA, presented Abed with the award “to highlight his more than 30 years at the head of one of the largest non-government development organisations in the world. This award is granted to a personality who has greatly improved the life of the community. Fazle Hasan Abed is a social worker and visionary. He left his job to devote himself to Bangladesh’s War of Independence. Abed initiated BRAC, the largest non-government development organisation in the world in terms of size and diversity of interventions.”

“Entrepreneur for the World” Awards are presented in four categories: in the Entrepreneur category Dr. Kazuo Inamori, founder of Kyocera Corporation and KDDI Corporation in Japan received the award; Mary Robinson, former President of the Republic of Ireland, received the award in the Politician category; and in the Expert category, Bert Twaalfhoven from the Netherlands, founder of 51 high tech companies in 11 countries was awarded.

Fazle Hasan Abed has been honoured with numerous international awards for his achievements within BRAC, among which: the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership (1980); Unicef's Maurice Pate Award (1992); Olof Palme Award (2001); Gates Award for Global Health (2004); Henry R. Kravis Prize in Leadership (2007). Clinton Global Citizenship Award (2007) as well as several honourary degrees from renowned universities including Columbia, Yale and Oxford.

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