Brighter Dawns (BD) founder Tasmiha Khan ’12 won a $10,000 grant from the Davis Project for Peace in January to increase access to clean water and health education in the slums of Bangladesh. Now, over summer break, BD’s dream will begin to become a reality.

With funding from the grant, Khan will spend six weeks in Khalishpur, Bangladesh administering the construction of tube wells and sanitary latrines and distributing sanitary kits to households in the region. Khan will also hire a local woman to serve as a community health officer to educate the community on how to sustain these new sanitary systems.

Since founding BD in September, Khan has worked tirelessly to raise awareness and collect funds for this project. For Khan, it has been surprising how quickly her hope to improve health conditions in Bangladesh has materialized.

“It was just an idea in August,” said Khan, a Biology major. “I still have people asking me where Bangladesh is. But now it is happening.”

Khan founded BD after spending her 2010 summer in Bangladesh helping to treat patients with diabetes. While she had always hoped to return to Bangladesh, the Project for Peace grant has allowed her to implement her idea this summer.

“The problems there are so intense that you can’t really quantify it in numbers,” Khan said. “Until you really truly see it, it’s hard to understand, but it motivated me to move forward and try to change things.”

To supplement the Project for Peace funding, BD held a 5K race in April, in which over 50 students and Middletown residents participated, raising $1,150. Other events have included offering care packages for midterms and finals, a fundraising event at Haveli’s Indian restaurant in Middletown, and selling healthy snack packs.

Khan attributed much of BD’s success to the dedicated work of the organization’s members. About 30 students are from BD’s Wesleyan chapter, while another 20 are from two other chapters in Michigan and Illinois.

The Davis Project for Peace is awarded each year to 100 undergraduates from 90 campuses nationwide to fund a summer project that promotes peace and conflict resolution. This year, BD was also a semi-finalist in the Dell Innovation Competition, which Kennedy Odede ’12 won in 2010.