On 7 and 8 April Dr. Khin Ni Ni Thein, Vice-President Development and Resources along with Mr. Sanjeev Jayasinghe Director Fundraising Campaign visited
Bangladesh. They met with Professor Engr Hannan, Rector of the EngineeringStaffCollege, who is willing to provide the infrastructure to set up an AITCenter in Bangladesh. The VP-DR discussed the possibilities whereby Bangladeshi students could do some semesters at the EngineeringStaffCollege and come to AIT for 1 or 2 semesters and ultimately be awarded an AIT degree. This proposal will be discussed further at PAC.They along with Mr. S.M.H Bokhari, President AITAA-Bangladesh chapter and senior distinguished alumni met with Mr. Badrul Alam Tarafder, Additional Secretary, and Ministry of Water Resources. The ministry would like to have their staff affiliated to the Water Resources Planning Commission, River Research Institute and Joint River Commission trained at the masters level and be given short term trainings at AIT.
On the invitation of the Mr. Emaduddin Ahmad, Executive Director of IWM and an alumnus of AIT, the VP-DR visited the Institute of Water Modeling (IWM) and gave a presentation to IWM senior management on "Hydro informatics for Asia: A new programme at AIT" which was well received. Discussions also took place regarding upgrading of the present relationship with AIT field of study into an Institute level MoU between AIT and IWM.
As part of the fundraising drive AITAA Bangladesh Chapter organized a high level dinner reception for the AIT delegation which was attended by senior Bangladeshi alumni, Vice-Chancellors of several prominent National and private Universities, H.E. Mr. Chalermpol Thanchitt, Ambassador of Thailand to Bangladesh, Mr. Shahed Akhtar, former Ambassador of Bangladesh to Thailand, Managing Directors of private sector companies etc. Mr. AKM Rafiquddin, Managing Director of Development Design Consultants, one of Bangladesh’ biggest engineering consultant firms committed to send his staff for short term training courses of about 1-2 weeks at AIT Extension under a project DDC has received where funding will come from ADB under 11 different training subjects and where the total number of trainees is over 230.
Mr. M. A. Sobhan, Managing Director, Design Planning and Management Consultants, made a pledge of Bangladesh Taka 50,000/. His subsidiary company Monico-headed by his son alumni of AIT, also pledged Taka 50,000/ for AIT’s fundraising campaign. Bangladeshi alumni from Canada who was on holiday in Dhaka who had read GJFC letters addressed to alumni has given Taka 27,000 to Mr. Bokhari, President AITAA-Bangladesh Chapter to be given to GJFC. Mr. Bokhari said that he will be actively contacting and talking face to face with active alumni in
Bangladesh, to convince them to contribute to GJFC a minimum of 500/- taka each during 2008-09. For those alumni residing abroad such as in Australia, Canada, USA, he will not fix a limit but would leave it up to the alumni to decide what they would like to contribute to AIT. These funds will then be sent to GJFC during these 2 years as contributions from AITAA-Bangladesh alumni.