BRAC founder named World Food Prize laureate
July 07, 2015 |10:58 AM
Sir Fazle Hasan Abed
The World Food Prize board last week named Sir Fazle Hasan Abed of Bangladesh, the founder of a nongovernmental organization known as BRAC, as its laureate for 2015.
The announcement was made Wednesday in a ceremony at the State Department at which Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack presided and Charles Rivkin, assistant secretary of the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs in the State Department, spoke.
Abed will be presented with the $250,000 prize in a ceremony at the Iowa State Capitol in Des Moines on October 15. The ceremony will take place during the Borlaug Dialogue, a symposium named for prize founder Norman Borlaug, which will be held October 14-16.
“BRAC, which was formerly known as Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, has been hailed as the most effective anti-poverty organization in the world,” the World Food Prize board said in making the announcement.
“Its agricultural and development innovations have improved food security for millions and contributed to a significant decline in poverty levels through direct impacts to farmers and small communities across the globe.
“Today BRAC operates 18 financially and socially profitable enterprises, across health, agriculture, livestock, fisheries, education, green energy, printing and retail sectors, and has been responsible for extraordinary advancements in the poultry, seed, and dairy industries in Bangladesh and other countries in which it operates in Africa.”
The Borlaug Dialogue theme this year will be “Fundamentals of Global Food Security,” World Food Prize President Kenneth Quinn said.
Speakers will include Rwanda President Paul Kagame and Chelsea Clinton, and there will be panel moderated by Catherine Bertini, the former executive director of the World Food Program and the 2003 World Food Prize laureate.
