End of an Era with Babu Rahman

Babu Rahman, whenever I hear this name I see light, as the most powerful quasars have luminosities thousands of times greater than a galaxy; such as the Milky Way. The supernova of his vision to educate the underprivileged children of Bangladesh outshine all the pulsars or stars in the galaxy.

Babu Rahman is the founder of Agami 1.0. and has also served as Agami’s president since 2003-2007, and then was re-elected a decade later in 2017. He is the “A.P.J Abdul Kalam” of Agami and Bangladesh. In an interview, when he was asked “What made you go out to Bangladesh and help?” He smiled and said “My parents are from Bangladesh, though I was born in Canada and grew up in U.S.A for school, but my ammu always impressed upon my brother and me the need to understand how fortunate we are and how bad you think things are for yourself, there’s always somebody who’s in a worse situation than you and that just not applies to Bangladesh, to anywhere in life, but being abbu and ammu from Bangladesh, it really resonated.”

His vision is akin to water in the desert and his interview or conversation with Farhana Zaman Mou is a contemplative gift to humanity.

Farhana: Why Agami is only about education?

Babu: Because at least for my family and I am sure for so many of our families in Bangladesh and other countries probably the single biggest decision point or decider of their fate is education. I saw the firsthand transformative power of education and I said this has to be the sole focus of Agami from the very beginning.

Agami began its journey in early 1990s, and in that period technology was not very developed, especially in Bangladesh. From here we can sense that Agami’s outset was not a smooth one. Yet, he managed to establish Agami at the heart of Bangladesh, let us hear this story now.

Farhana: How difficult was it to initiate this idea with friends and family to fundraise and to even start thinking that Agami education in Bd can be a possibility.

Babu: It was very difficult, as back then we didn’t have I would call a great email system, I didn't have any large network of Bangladeshi friends and family , and the way the idea of Agami was socialized , was going to adda, functions and talk about Agami. And, about 30 years ago this idea of raising money and starting your own non-profit was met with great skepticism, and another strike against, actually reality as everyone in the community knows I don’t speak Bangla, and they said to me that go learn Bangla first and then we can talk about it, there was a lot of pushback and therefore Agami did not grow so quickly in the beginning. But, in 2002 when I met Sabir Majumder and Abu Hassan , they said okay let’s do this, that’s when things got started; and, those three musketeers together formed the nexus of Agami 2.0

Agami’s dawn was rather a cloudy one, with three brave men working hard to change the lives of underprivileged children of Bangladesh. However, after thirty years of their perseverance, dedication and hard work, Agami has become a global name now with more than 120 volunteers across Bangladesh and USA. Day by day it is growing. Many years back, Mahatma Gandhi showed us “In a gentle way, you can shake the world” and today, after so many years Babu Rahman portrayed that with love and humanity you can manifest new possibilities.

Shamma Siddika

Queens, New York