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Sir Fazle Hasan Abed has been honoured as the 2015 World Food Prize Laureate Featured

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Founder of BRAC received this prestigious prize for giving nearly 150 million people worldwide the opportunity for enhanced food security and a pathway out of poverty.
 
BRAC founder and chairperson Sir Fazle Hasan Abed has been honoured as the 2015 World Food Prize Laureate, on 16 October 2015 at 06:30am (Bangladesh time) at a ceremony held at the Iowa State Capitol Building in Des Moines, Iowa, USA. This highly prestigious prize was conferred to him for his outstanding contribution to enhancing the world's production and distribution of food to those most in need.

The chairman of The World Food Prize John Ruan III handed over the award to Sir Fazle at the event which was the centrepiece of a three-day international symposium. This prize which often referred as the Nobel Prize for food and agriculture also includes USD 250,000.

Receiving the award Sir Fazle said, “I must acknowledge that the award does not belong to me alone, it is the recognition of BRAC’s work over the last 43 years in providing pathways out of poverty for millions of people in Bangladesh and other countries in Africa and Asia.”

He also said “The real heroes in our story are the poor themselves and, in particular, women struggling with poverty who overcome enormous challenges each day of their lives. Throughout our work across the world, we have learnt that countries and culture vary; but realities, struggles, aspirations and dreams of poor and marginalised people are remarkably similar. In order to solve the multidimensional problems of poverty, we have to think big, in terms of millions not thousands and holistically. In the coming decades we must refine methods of delivery at scale, placing solutions at the hands of poor people themselves and track progress. Only by putting the poor specially women in charge of their own lives and destinies will poverty and deprivation can be removed from the face of the earth.”

Guests and dignitaries present at the ceremony included US secretary of agriculture Tom Vilsack, president of World Food Prize Foundation Ambassador Kenneth Quinn, president of Iowa senate Honourable Pam Jochum, speaker of Iowa house Honourable Linda Upmeyer. Former president of republic of Malawi and founder of the Joyce Banda Foundation Mrs Joyce Banda was present as distinguished special guest of honour. The ceremony was presided by the governor of Iowa Terry Branstad.

BRAC is widely credited as a major contributor to Bangladesh's achievement in halving poverty and hunger levels since 1990, in line with the UN's Millennium Development Goals, through its sustained efforts in the fields of poverty and hunger eradication and food security. By focusing on scalable solutions, BRAC’s food programmes have turned into sustainable social enterprises that provide inputs and access to stable markets for the rural poor. From its inception till today,

BRAC has helped nearly 150 million people worldwide with the opportunity for enhanced food security.

Earlier this year, Ambassador Kenneth M. Quinn, announced Sir Fazle as this year’s winner at a ceremony at the State Department in Washington, DC.

BRAC's agriculture and food security programmes are part of a larger set of poverty eradication interventions working in 11 countries, empowering the poor, especially women and girls, using tools such as microfinance, education, health care, legal services, community empowerment, social enterprises, and a full-fledged university, BRAC University, in Dhaka.

 

Watch Sir Fazle's speech at the ceremony

 

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