2014-2016 impact: Illustration Vocational: What drives Bangladeshi women?

In Bangladesh, GK is one of the main health providers. It started by training women paramedics and also taught them to ride bicycles, which was not evident in Bangladesh, and against fundamentalism, promoting equal opportunities. Since 1980s, GK also recruited marginalized women from the rural areas to learn how to drive cars, and then facilitated driving licences from the government. This met with much success, and a formal school for women drivers was inaugurated mid-1990s in the south, Cox Bazars. Since that time, around 100 women were trained and GK currently employs 12 female drivers, which draw a lot of attention when driving across the cities and countryside. In 2014, BRAC also took over this training for women. Since it became such a flagship programme, in 2016, GK gathered 38 of the trained women drivers and they were all working, mostly in NGO, UN agencies, hotels, less for families or private cars. Currently, since GK is also heavily involved in humanitarian support for the Roshingya refugees, they are also looking to employ Roshingya female drivers, but it won’t be easy to obtain driving permits for them.