UNB, Dhaka :
Bangladeshi mountaineer Wasfia Nazreen who has been named an Adventurer of the Year 2014-15 by the National Geographic, said some 80 percent people in Bangladesh have not seen a mountain but her visit to every continent made them proud.
A total of 10 people in as many categories were named in the list with Wasfia earning the prestige in the activist category on Friday.
“Eighty percent people (of Bangladesh) haven’t seen a mountain,” says Nazreen adding that “Going to every continent took the Bangladeshi people to every continent. It gave them a lot of pride.”
In an interview with National Geographic Magazine online, Nazreen said she sold some family jewellery, took out tens of thousands of dollars in loans, and went to work.
While exact numbers are difficult to pin down, approximately 350 people have climbed the Seven Summits. If activist Wasfia Nazreen summits Oceania’s Carstensz Pyramid in late November,
it won’t rank as a stunning mountaineering feat-ascending to the continents’ high points isn’t as revered as other more daunting mountaineering feats, the magazine reports.
Certainly, she may become the first to hula-hoop on all seven, but Nazreen’s goal reaches far beyond summits, routes, and firsts.
In 2010, Nazreen was working for international humanitarian aid group CARE in her native country of Bangladesh.
One of CARE’s projects pulled 3,000 women and children out of brothels and began educating and training them for careers outside the sex industry.
Bangladesh is the eighth most populous country, with just under a third of its people living below the international poverty line.
Then the funding for the project dried up. Unable to win a grant to continue the program, CARE left and Nazreen watched as the 3,000 women and children were left in social limbo, ostracized by Bangladeshi society and removed from what little social support the brothels had afforded them, according to Nazreen.
“Worse yet were the kids. They had almost escaped the cyclical nature of the brothel life,” says 32-year-old Nazreen, who has worked in the human rights field since her early 20s, after graduating from Agnes Scott College. “We were so dependent on these foreign organizations. If [an NGO] left, it was almost like a program just ended.”
Nazreen decided that while foreign support had its role in the developing nation, it was time for the Bangladeshi people to begin building aid organizations that were not headed by foreigners.
She had begun mountaineering in 2006, while working in Tibet to stem human rights violations by the Chinese government. She decided to combine her two passions-activism and climbing.
First, she created the Bangladesh on Seven Summits foundation to oversee the climbing portion of her mission and began ticking off the peaks with a Bangladeshi flag in hand.
At that point no Bangladeshi had completed the Seven Summits. The 40th anniversary of Bangladeshi independence was in 2011, and the country was hungry to celebrate.
Bangladeshi mountaineer Wasfia Nazreen who has been named an Adventurer of the Year 2014-15 by the National Geographic, said some 80 percent people in Bangladesh have not seen a mountain but her visit to every continent made them proud.
A total of 10 people in as many categories were named in the list with Wasfia earning the prestige in the activist category on Friday.
“Eighty percent people (of Bangladesh) haven’t seen a mountain,” says Nazreen adding that “Going to every continent took the Bangladeshi people to every continent. It gave them a lot of pride.”
In an interview with National Geographic Magazine online, Nazreen said she sold some family jewellery, took out tens of thousands of dollars in loans, and went to work.
While exact numbers are difficult to pin down, approximately 350 people have climbed the Seven Summits. If activist Wasfia Nazreen summits Oceania’s Carstensz Pyramid in late November,
it won’t rank as a stunning mountaineering feat-ascending to the continents’ high points isn’t as revered as other more daunting mountaineering feats, the magazine reports.
Certainly, she may become the first to hula-hoop on all seven, but Nazreen’s goal reaches far beyond summits, routes, and firsts.
In 2010, Nazreen was working for international humanitarian aid group CARE in her native country of Bangladesh.
One of CARE’s projects pulled 3,000 women and children out of brothels and began educating and training them for careers outside the sex industry.
Bangladesh is the eighth most populous country, with just under a third of its people living below the international poverty line.
Then the funding for the project dried up. Unable to win a grant to continue the program, CARE left and Nazreen watched as the 3,000 women and children were left in social limbo, ostracized by Bangladeshi society and removed from what little social support the brothels had afforded them, according to Nazreen.
“Worse yet were the kids. They had almost escaped the cyclical nature of the brothel life,” says 32-year-old Nazreen, who has worked in the human rights field since her early 20s, after graduating from Agnes Scott College. “We were so dependent on these foreign organizations. If [an NGO] left, it was almost like a program just ended.”
Nazreen decided that while foreign support had its role in the developing nation, it was time for the Bangladeshi people to begin building aid organizations that were not headed by foreigners.
She had begun mountaineering in 2006, while working in Tibet to stem human rights violations by the Chinese government. She decided to combine her two passions-activism and climbing.
First, she created the Bangladesh on Seven Summits foundation to oversee the climbing portion of her mission and began ticking off the peaks with a Bangladeshi flag in hand.
At that point no Bangladeshi had completed the Seven Summits. The 40th anniversary of Bangladeshi independence was in 2011, and the country was hungry to celebrate.
