From Teaching Street Children to Donating Blood: Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University Students Stand Beside City Residents

Surrounded by high-rise buildings, traffic noise and spreading concrete, the green campus of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University (SAU) works not only on agricultural research and practical education but also on environmental conservation and humanitarian values. Student involvement in teaching street children, helping disadvantaged people and donating blood in emergencies has widened the university's role.

Alongside its contribution to the country's agricultural development and food security, SAU plays a multifaceted role in city life. Beyond research and classrooms, its students have joined various social activities — standing beside people in need while growing into a generation responsible toward nature and society.

Agricultural research needs field-level experiments and real experience alongside theoretical knowledge. On SAU's roughly 14-acre central research farm, students from different departments conduct more than 300 research experiments every year. The university also runs dairy, poultry and fishery farms, a nursery and a mini zoo, where students get hands-on learning and research opportunities.

That research supports new crop varieties, disease control, soil fertility, safe food production and modern agricultural technology. The university's knowledge can also serve city residents in areas such as urban agriculture, rooftop gardening and environment-friendly farming systems.

A leading example of the students' humanitarian work is the volunteer organisation 'Alokito Manush', founded on 2 April 2019 to create educational opportunities for disadvantaged and street children. Every Friday and Saturday, volunteers teach children on the premises of the university's old Agribusiness Faculty.

The programme covers children living in slums across the capital, children of people working in the university halls' canteens and dining rooms, and children of university officers and staff. The school has about 50 regular students and 10 regular volunteer teachers. Besides teaching, the organisation distributes winter clothes to the cold-stricken and iftar and Eid items during Ramadan.

The organisation's president, Md. Said Ahmed, said 'Alokito Manush' has always worked giving importance to humanitarian values and social responsibility. Its main goal, he said, is to work for people's welfare through collective effort and to contribute to positive change in society, and such humanitarian activities will continue in the future.

SAU students also help meet hospital patients' need for blood. Around 10 specialised government hospitals are located in the capital's Sher-e-Bangla Nagar and surrounding areas. Many patients treated there urgently need blood, and the SAU unit of the voluntary blood donors' organisation 'Badhon' works to meet part of that demand.

Badhon SAU unit president Anindya Biswas Arghya said the voluntary blood donors' organisation Badhon has served humanity since 1997. Because of its location, demand for blood at the SAU unit is always high; university students donate about 40 to 50 bags of blood every month, most of it for patients at nearby hospitals. The unit's contact numbers are posted at the hospitals' blood transfusion departments, from where patients' relatives get in touch, and many also come directly to the hall gates to take students for donation.

Arghya added that with donor numbers limited compared to demand, meeting the huge need is not always possible, yet they try their best so that no patient has to be turned away for want of blood. In a densely populated city like Dhaka, SAU's trees, flower gardens, nursery and open green spaces also play an important role for students and city residents alike.