Fall 2010 - Asian University for Women

COMMUNITY 19
The Chittagong community welcomes
AUW into its midst, and AUW students
show their appreciation.
If desks, blackboards, and books are the building
blocks of any university, then a greater sense of
community, and the caliber of the individuals who
make up that community, are what separates the
mediocre from the extraordinary—and bring a university
alive with the pulse of intellectual collaboration
and discovery. This community of learning, especially
for exceptional universities, is rarely restricted to campus
boundaries, but instead reaches outward, sharing
its best and brightest with its neighbors.
As the Asian University for Women welcomes new
students to M.M. Ali Road each year, it continues to
strengthen its bonds with the surrounding community.
In fact, Chittagong was chosen as the site of the
University—with plans to eventually build a permanent
campus just beyond the city limits—precisely
because the port area’s diverse population presents
limitless potential for enriching the students’ experience.
Within AUW, there are students from 12
countries throughout Asia and the Middle East; just
outside the University, there is a Buddhist temple, a
Hindu temple, a church, and a mosque.
Yet despite the diversity of the city’s population, the
opening of AUW in Chittagong was nothing short
of an anomaly. Nonetheless, the community greeted
the University with open arms. When AUW’s Access
Academy was first established in 2008, the University
partnered with local residents to create a host mother
program for the Access Academy students, the majority
of whom had never before lived away from home.
The host mothers introduced the young women to
Bangladeshi culture, often taking them on trips to different
sites throughout the city, inviting them to their
homes, and sharing with them the local cuisine.
These Walls
Many of the host mothers learned of AUW through
Mrs. Monowara Hakim Ali, the president of the
Chittagong Women Chamber of Commerce and
Industry and a former member of AUW’s Bangladesh
Board of Advisors. Mrs. Hakim Ali founded the
Chittagong Women Chamber of Commerce in 1989
to counteract the lack of Bangladeshi women in the
workplace. The organization seeks to empower
women in Chittagong to assume roles beyond the
home by granting them the skills and the support
to transform their daily hobbies, such as knitting and
cooking, into profitable businesses.
LEFT: A traffic jam of cars, trucks, rickshaws, and CNGs (named
for their fuel source: compressed natural gas) makes for organized
chaos during rush hour in Chittagong.