Imrul's Mission: English Schools for Generational Change

UPDATE: We hit our first goal, but the more we raise, the more kids we can help!

Hi, I'm Imrul Hassan and I was born in Bangladesh. To be more specific, I was born in a small, impoverished village on the kitchen floor in a tin house. Despite these humble beginnings, I was able to make a life for myself in New York where I have a flourishing (sorta) real estate career, a floundering reality TV career, great friends, and even an electric skateboard. Who'd have thought I'd get here? Definitely not that little boy from that village way back when.

Over the past 10 years, I've gone back almost every year and wanted to help the people out somehow. I've been so fortunate, but how do I give back? At first, I thought I'd build homes; I am in real estate after all. But that doesn't tackle the root of the problem I saw there: the inability for upward financial mobility. Most of the villagers on that island that I call my birthplace will go on to be farmers, shopkeepers, or vendors, making about $200 a month. You can survive on that but barely. I want them to thrive, but they need to learn a skill set that can be used in today's global, highly connected, expansive workspace.

This is where English comes in. It dawned on me that knowing English is a skill set, highly commodifiable in a tech-connected economy, and yet NO ONE is teaching these villagers this. This is the way we get families out of generational poverty. Ok, that might be the lofty end goal, but a boy can dream, right? What I do know is that we need to start. Earlier last year, I went about and started this process of opening up an English school, and I launched the first few classes at the beginning of the fall last year. Currently, we have about 50 students, small but it's a start. My goal is to get this number up to 500 by the end of this year. In order to do so, I've already put up the funds to get us more teachers, more books, and more resources, but I could use some help. Any small amount will go a long way here. This GoFundMe's target is to open up another learning outpost in another village so that learning is accessible to the children over there. With your help, I can open up that space, furnish it, bring in Wi-Fi and a tv (a big part of learning English is watching English movies, that was a big part of my learning) get all learning materials, and pay rent/staff for a year. It will go a long way in changing the trajectory of these children's future.

Go on this journey with me in changing a paradigm. Let's be the change we want to see.