Volunteers Association for Bangladesh (VAB, pronounced VaaB – meaning “idea” or “feeling” in Bengali) aims at empowering poor children of rural Bangladesh to have a brighter future. VAB helps them gain quality high school education and vocational skills training.

Since its establishment in 1998, VAB has helped more than 50,000 young men and women and their families in rural areas of Bangladesh to overcome poverty. VAB’s mission is now moving forward with greater strength and higher hopes.

VAB is dedicated to quality high school education in rural Bangladesh. It started working with rural schools in 2000, by giving scholarships to 20 students in 10 schools. Since then, in nearly two decades of work, VAB has been learning extensively about the needs of rural students and schools. At the same time, it has been discovering hitherto untapped advantages of rural Bangladesh that can be used to improve quality of education. VAB has been doing just that -- developing and executing programs addressing the needs, refining those programs to increase their effectiveness and reducing their costs, and most importantly, promoting achievement of quality education in rural Bangladesh.

The leaders of VAB thought it was high time to do a brainstorming exercise for the purpose of reviewing critical challenges facing VAB today and formulating strategies and actionable measures for a future of long-term success and sustainability. The Retreat in Deer Park, NY on August 5, 2018 was a seminal VAB event organized for that purpose.

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