Hope Over Fate - Author Talk

Our final Humanitarian Action event of the semester is the upcoming author talk with Scott MacMillan, author of Hope Over Fate: Fazle Hasan Abed and the Science of Ending Global Poverty on Tuesday, April 18 @ 6pm in the downtown bookstore. 

 Book Summary: Fazle Hasan Abed was a mild-mannered accountant who may be the most influential man most people have never heard of. As the founder of BRAC, his work had a profound impact on the lives of millions. A former finance executive with almost no experience in relief aid, he founded BRAC, originally the Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee, in 1972, aiming to help a few thousand war refugees. A half century later, BRAC is by many measures the largest nongovernmental organization in the world—and by many accounts, the most effective anti-poverty program ever.

BRAC stands apart from countless failed development ventures. Its scale is massive, with 100,000 employees reaching more than 100 million people in Asia and Africa. In Bangladesh, where it began, Abed’s work gave rise to “some of the biggest gains in the basic condition of people’s lives ever seen anywhere,” according to The Economist. His methods changed the way global policymakers think about poverty. By the time of his death at eighty-three in December 2019, Abed was revered in international development circles. Yet among the wider public he remained largely unknown. His story has never been told—until now.