10 December 2011, Dhaka. The 5th annual e-Asia event, Asia’s largest ICT for Development Conference and Exhibition convened in Dhaka from 1st – 3rd December 2011 at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre. The conference focused on e-technology and the progress, prospect and problems faced in Bangladesh with regards to innovative technology in an Asian context. With the slogan ‘Realising Digital Nation’, the event commemorated the launch of Digital Bangladesh 2021, an initiative to increase ICT literacy in the country, provide government services through e-platforms and generate more employment in the service industry for the increasing number of young professionals entering the job market.
As one of the Knowledge Partners for the event, BRAC, in conjunction with BRAC University and BRAC, showcased their innovative developmental products and shared their expansion activities in agriculture, education, human rights, healthcare and disaster management using information and communication technology. Some of these include iCARESS (Integrated Collaboration and Rapid Emergency Support Services), which is designed to address comprehensive collaboration effort across various BRAC programmes, educational materials in conjunction with Computer Aided Learning, the launching of BRAC’s e-Education website and the various products under their Solar project (e.g. flashlights). Also showcased at the BRAC stall was ChondroBot, a mining device constructed by students from BRAC University which facilitated their progress to the second round in NASA’s 2nd Annual Lunabotics Mining Competition earlier this year.
Representing BRAC at the various seminars were Dr. Safiqul Islam, Director, BRAC Education Programme, who chaired the session on Future Classroom: Increasing Learning Achievements; Asif Saleh, Director, Communications who presented on Electronic and mobile payments - Financial Inclusion for the unbanked, with relation to bKash; and Masum Billah, Program Manager PACE, BRAC Education Programme and Mahmuda Yasmin Shaila, a Lecturer at BRAC University, both of whom addressed Localised Content for Digital Learning.
