In Dhaka, a Grade 10 student teaches English and collects winter coats

Its founder, Adiba Binte Ahmad Tuba, was a Grade 10 student at Aga Khan Academy Dhaka when her school profiled her in April 2025.

The foundation is a nonprofit working to reduce poverty in Bangladesh. Tuba’s motivation came during the COVID-19 pandemic, when she organized aid for essential workers. The school does not give a founding date, so we won’t invent one.

The learning piece is the part that belongs on this page. The foundation runs English lessons for students at local girls’ schools, one of them Tahzibul Banat Uttara Mohila Madrasa, a small girls’ school. A lesson there left Tuba deeply moved by the students’ joy despite their circumstances, the academy reported. English is a practical thing to teach. It is a gateway to better jobs and wider reading, and it is rarely taught well in under-resourced schools.

The rest of the work is hands-on. The foundation collects food and clothing, donates menstrual hygiene products, runs health awareness campaigns and delivers disaster relief that includes food, clothing and first aid kits. It distributed winter clothing in underserved districts including Panchagarh and Rangpur. The school gives no figures for how many people were served or how much was raised.

In 2024, Tuba received a Diana Award, which honors people aged 9 to 25 who make a positive difference. She told the academy the recognition changed how people saw the work. “The award helped people believe in our cause,” she said, adding that the foundation has since raised more funds to expand.

Her advice to other young organizers is plain. “Start small. Even a single act of kindness can create ripples,” she said.

It is a modest line, and the work is modest in the best sense: a classroom, a coat, a first aid kit, repeated until it adds up. A foundation like this is a good reminder that an education project does not have to begin with an app or a grant. Sometimes it begins with a teenager showing up with a lesson plan.