Ella Founder Mamunur Rahman was selected by the British Council, UK for a prestigious British Council Alumni Award in the South Asia regional Social Impact Category. The Award recognises the outstanding achievements of alumni with a UK higher education whose work has positively changed their society or community.
Mamunur completed a Masters degree in Gender and Development taught jointly by IDS and the University of Sussex in 2007. On graduating, Mamunur joined the SME Foundation serving eight million small and medium enterprises (SMEs) directly and indirectly with policy support. Mamunur led the research and policy advocacy team promoting women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh and was instrumental in creating a section on women entrepreneurs in the public office. He is doing advocacy for sustainable SMEs and specially for circular textile sector as the country is vulnerable because of doing textile/garments business following the leaner economic system. While millions of tons of wastes are dumped in river and fresh water bodies, which is hardly usable even for agricultural irrigation.
Mamunur is encouraging SMEs in doing recycling textile just reusing the scraps of the garment sector. So far, he has engaged about 3000 SMEs in different part of the countries to do this recycling textile business.