Thank you Nafisa Khanam

Nafisa reminisces her student life in Holy Cross and how her parents played a crucial role in her education. Her mother, who also finished Higher Secondary and Bachelor degree from Holy Cross College was her mentor. Besides music, arts and crafts, dance, recitation, cooking and sewing, her parents encouraged her to read a lot. She remembers facing challenges in understanding science and higher mathematics since she had very little after-school science and mathematics to do because her parents were from humanities background. She realized how necessary it was for school education to develop better science and mathematics mentorship so that students don’t depend on after school tutoring. This has continued to be her focus from very early on. 

She believes that “Education is the predominant factor to organize life in a standard and discipline way. Overall development of a child is only possible through effective education.” This compassion in her has really helped the AEF team drive their several initiatives successfully.

She has won several accolades for her passion for literature and arts. She was awarded with the first prize National Award for the Essay competition in 1970. She secured twelfth in her SSC boards across the country and topped in Masters in Education. Aside from education, she won the first place in Rabindra Sangeet in district level in 1991. With her creative affluence and love for arts, she also worked as a full time employee and conducted programs in Radio Bangladesh since 1975 to 1979, like “Nabin Kontho” and “Jubo Kantho”.

On the professional front, she joined in Holy Cross as Senior teacher specializing in Chemistry. And then she joined NCTB. She developed a manual on SBA/CA and started training teachers all over Bangladesh on SBA/CA. Her manual was designed to include topics and teaching processes for education effectiveness across all schools. She was soon approached to develop creative question manuals and train ‘Master Trainers’ who would train Chemistry teachers all over Bangladesh. As a Resource Person to the NCTB, she designed the National Chemistry Curriculum for classes six to ten and co-authored the Chemistry textbook of class nine and ten. Her integrative teaching processes which includes the right mix of textbook and practical exercises have been considered as an effective learning curve, and hence she was asked to design and develop manuals for Teaching Science in Hands-On Practice, Science Training Manuals for different junior and senior classes. In 2017 and 2018, retired Nafisa was appointed as a member of the Bangladesh Education Development Unit (BEDU) to develop chemistry manuals.

Nafisa has dedicated her experience to the development of Agami. She took the lead in organizing the three Agami Education Foundation (AEF) fundraiser events and annual general meetings. She developed the AEF services rules which is imperative to the AEF guidelines. Since 2016, she used her integration skills and effective teaching methods to introduce the Teachers’ Training and Head Teachers’ workshop through the program Life in Science (LiF) program. The program aims to train teachers across all classes from Agami-sponsored schools in the hope to align and deliver better teaching methods in under-resourced and underprivileged schools. In the recent, the program was successful in Doshgram High School, Laxmipur Shimanto Bazaar and Sreeyang where all head teachers were trained in mathematics, science and English directed by Ms. Khanam and her team’s manuals.

Nafisa’s practical exercises have been another milestone in Agami developments. The exercises involved wall magazine competitions with a specific theme. It encourages students from all Agami-sponsored schools to participate and a prize-giving ceremony is organized to ensure that students are constantly motivated. One of the best, that she reminisces was following the theme “Amazing World of Engineering.”

 Apart from directly maneuvering the LiF program, she does a host of other things to keep AEF running seamlessly, including volunteer management, administrative and finance management, communication and liasing between Agami Inc and AEF.

 Nafisa is also known for her generous roles in helping other charity initiatives, one of them being the lead of Disaster Management to AEF and contributed a generous donation to Chatpara Ideal Academy. She is a director to another non-profit organization called “Self” which promotes education and health care for the underprivileged. Currently, the Moghbazar slums are being provided with health education services. She also travels to districts far from Dhaka capital and to her village home to regularly donate exercise books and tiffins, provide scholarships for meritorious underprivileged students through her family trust funds named after her grandfather, “Serajul Haque- Feroza khatun Memorial Trust.” She is currently working on the design and implementation of the AEF Library Porject since April 2019. She is working with different schools to manage libraries and raising donation books to be distributed to charity libraries.

We wish Nafisa and the best in her endeavors, and as part of the “Give me a good mother” campaign, applaud her dedication and persistence to ensure a better life for underprivileged children.