Empowering Bangladeshi women to lead safe and independent lives

Bangladesh

Like many Bangladeshis, Eve grew up surrounded by poverty with few opportunities for formal, stable work. Her parents sacrificed a lot to send her to school and she became the first girl in her community to go to university where she studied business. Eve’s parents wanted her to have a successful career in the financial sector in the US and live a comfortable, affluent life there.

While at university Eve volunteered with a United Nations agency in the northern regions of Bangladesh. Her work centred around a school with a distressingly high dropout rate among girls. She researched what was happening and discovered that the absence of proper sanitary toilet facilities was causing many girls to abandon their education once they reached puberty. Eve presented this vital information to the UN agency, resulting in the implementation of sanitary toilet facilities in the school. The dropout rate significantly decreased within just one year.

Eve felt for the first time that she’d really made an impact. And that moment marked a turning point in her life, where she decided to change her path away from finance to become a dedicated advocate for social reform and women's empowerment.

She received a scholarship to do her master’s in Social Entrepreneurship at a prestigious university in the US. After graduating she had the difficult task of disappointing her parents who had worked so hard for her to live a comfortable life in the US, because her heart was with her people back in Bangladesh. She also faced the intense cultural pressure for girls to obey their parents’ wishes. But Eve persisted, and returned to Bangladesh on a mission.

She started out working with a small group of former child brides, empowering them to be self-sufficient through skills and employment training. Then in 2014 she founded Amal Foundation - meaning “Hope” in Arabic - to support girls all over the country.

Amal Foundation, under Eve's leadership, focuses on a diverse range of critical areas that all intersect with the empowerment of girls and women; including education, emergency response, health and climate change. The Amal team were pioneers in providing emergency relief to the Rohingya refugees who fled genocide in Myanmar and sought sanctuary in Bangladesh. They established a model village inside a refugee camp equipped with 472 shelters, clean water filters and learning centres, and also provided food, medical aid and security for women. Amal now operates in 33 districts of Bangladesh and has reached over 300,000 people so far.

Most recently, Eve and her team have taken on the formidable challenge of addressing child marriage which is prevalent in rural areas of Bangladesh. In very traditional communities, they provide business loans for parents who might consider marrying off their young daughters for economic reasons, helping to break the dual cycles of poverty and child marriage.

Eve’s unwavering commitment to people in Bangladesh earned her recognition as a Forbes Asia 30 under 30 in 2020. She’s also a Forbes Power Woman, Swedish Institute Leadership Fellow, Acumen Fellow and Joy Bangla Youth Awardee for 2023.

Her lived experience as the first woman from her community to go to university and then start her own foundation, reflects her determination to break barriers and create new ways for Bangladeshi women to live. Her parents are now extremely proud of the choices she’s made and the work she does for their people. Eve's ultimate goal is to create a substantial and lasting revolution throughout Bangladesh, where every girl has the opportunity and power to choose how she leads her own life.