From the March 2016 issue of The Rotarian

Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, is the 11th-largest city on earth. Nearly a third of its 15 million residents live in trash-strewn slums, subsisting on less than $2 a day. Women have it worst: Second-class citizens, often married off in their midteens, many struggle to raise children in conditions most Westerners would find medieval. A recent study found that “65 percent of slum women share one toilet with more than seven families.”

Into this “difficulty” steps Hashrat Ara. “Difficulty” is her understatement of the challenges a physician faces in Washpur, one of Dhaka’s poorest townships. A vast maze of dirt-floored huts made of wood and corrugated metal, Washpur floods each monsoon season, leaving its inhabitants ankle-deep in polluted water. Yet life goes on – with help from one of Rotary International’s “Global Women of Action.”