Why Bangladesh??

I was always been involved in Interact (Rotary international's schools intervention) at school, and then SHAWCO (A student-run NGO that worked in the field of education in the townships (slums) surrounding Cape Town). As I was nearing the end of my degree and coming swiftly to the realisation that working in finance was just not my interest, Varkey George, the director of SHAWCO, assisted me in writing a proposal for a fellowship programme at NYCU's Centre of Civil Society and Philanthropy.

I didn't get the fellowship, but what I did get, was a new direction combining both my interest in development and business background. I was granted an internship at the Yunus Centre in Bangladesh, working in the office of Professor Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Laureate and founder of Grameen Bank, to work on social business.

So on the 1st of January 2010, I boarded a plane destined for Dhaka (Bangladesh not Senegal), one of the most overpopulated Muslim cities in the world, in a "least developed country" and one that I knew only as a cricket-playing nation and very little else. Reading the Lonely Planet guide of Bangladesh on the way over indicated a poor life decision, as the author, while having a great sense of humour, evidently wasn't particularly fond of Bangladesh. Rather amusing!