News & Impact

When she returned to Bangladesh after completing six weeks of professional development in the United States with the Teaching Excellence and Achievement Program (TEA), Musammat Badrunesha was determined to do something to benefit her fellow English language teachers in Moulvibazar District. After obtaining funding and support from the Deputy Commissioner and District Education Officer, three outstanding TEA alumni—Musammat Badrunesha, Ayan Chowdhury, and Debobroto Shaha—conducted a two-day workshop for 140 teachers, representing every secondary school in the Moulvibazar District.

IREX’s film “Forty Years of Building Relationships and Sharing Expertise” provides a glimpse of our diverse work around the world. With footage and interviews from Bangladesh, Egypt, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Serbia, and elsewhere, participants and partners tell their stories of how IREX projects have affected them, their work, and their countries. From our founding in the middle of the Cold War to today, the 10-minute film provides both a historical look and highlights of a few of our activities in over 100 countries.

Just after evening prayers on a cool spring night in February, thousands of Bangladeshis young and old tumbled into a village school yard, chattering excitedly. Sitakunda, a community of 5,000 people in the country’s poorest province, has no electricity, and the arrival of a high-tech cinema truck promising an evening’s entertainment generates a great deal of local buzz.