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Dr. Saidur Rahman Lasker is a Bangladeshi economist, philanthropist, and community leader in Italy. Having spent a career at the United Nations and Commonweath Secretariat in Rome and London, he currently runs a non-profit school and rural clinic in a village in Bangladesh. He is also a founder member and board member of East West University and Dhaka School of Economics in Bangladesh.

Personal Life
Lasker is married to Jahanara Rahman Lasker and has been living in Rome since 1974. He has three children, two of whom live in London and the other in New York. As such, he spends his time travelling between Rome, London, the USA and Bangladesh. He has been married to Jahanara Rahman Lasker since 1966. She was the daughter of late Abu Taher, owner of Raj Textiles Mill in Jessore.

Early life
Saidur Lasker was born on 3 March 1940 from a Muslim family in the village of Khanderpara in the district of Gopalganj in Bangladesh. His great grandfather likely originated from Basra, Iraq.

Education and career
After obtaining a Master’s degree in Economics from Dhaka University in 1961 he joined Bangladesh’s Ministry of Agriculture as an Agricultural Economist. He became a lecturer in Economics at Chittagong Government College in 1963, before moving to Dhaka College in Dhaka where he worked for about one year before getting promoted to the post of professor of Economics at M.C. College in Sylhet. Whilst there, he got a scholarship from the Directorate of Public Instruction (the DPI), Government of the then East Pakistan for a post graduate diploma course at the University of Reading, UK in October 1966. Subsequent to this, he undertook a PhD degree at the University of Wales. Upon completion, he was employed by the Commonwealth Secretariat as an Economist, where he worked for 6 years, before joining the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) as a Commodity Economist. He worked there for almost 25 years.

Career at the UN
As Commodity Specialist in the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome, Italy, Lasker, became an expert in Jute, a natural fibre and the main export commodity of Bangladesh. In his capacity as Secretary of the lnter-Governmental Group on Jute, Kenaf and Allied Fibres, he actively pursued safeguarding the jute market from competition from synthetics and, in doing so, helping to provide livelihood for millions of jute farmers in Bangladesh and other jute producing countries. With funding from the Rockefeller foundation and European Union, Lasker organised an international Conference on "Jute and Environment" in the Hague in 1993. The aim of the conference was to boost the markets for jute by promoting ideas such as diversification and the environmental benefits attributed to this crop. He also helped the establishment of the International Jute Study Group (formerly called International Jute Organisation) headquartered in Bangladesh.

Establishment of rural school
In 2005 Lasker established the first kindergarten school in his native village called Khanderpara Kindergarten. He also built a high school on 15 Jan 2004, which has about 650 students, called “Dr. Saidur Rahman Lasker Academy”.

=== Founder-Member of East West University === Along with a group of prominent academics, business leaders, professionals and education enthusiasts, in 1992, Lasker established formed a non-profit, non-political, charitable organization called Progoti Foundation for Education and Development (PFED). East West University (EWU) in Dhaka was is its first major project. Classes started in September 1996 with 6 faculty members and 20 students in a campus located in Mohakhali C/A, Dhaka. Today there are over 281 faculty members and over 8000 students enrolled through a process of selection. In keeping with its name, East West University, promotes eastern culture and values and is rated today as one of the top private universities of Bangladesh. Lasker organized at EWU an international conference on 'Transgressing/Transcending Borders Through Translation' in January 2019.

Establishment of Dhaka School of Economics
Dr Lasker was also involved in the establishment of the Dhaka School of Economics (DScE) in 2010 as one of the nine members of its governing council. The idea of establishing this school began in 1996 when he prepared a memorandum of intention to start a school of this type with his friend Dr. Kazi Kholiquzzaman, a prominent economist in Bangladesh. The fact that two of his children got their Masters degrees from the London School of Economics inspired him into developing something similar in Dhaka.

Rural Health Clinic
In 2010 Lasker established a small health clinic in Khandarpara, Bangladesh, with the aim of providing essential health advice, pharmacy dispensing and simple medical procedures. After a few years, an operating laboratory was built, allowing maternity services and child delivery. The motivation to build the clinic stemmed from a desire to improve access to healthcare in the village.

Charitable work
Lasker set up a family trust called S & J Lasker Trust in 2007. Proceeds from the Trust are spent on funding the primary school in Khandarpara as well as the rural health clinic. Both of these village institutions are entirely not-for-profit and rely entirely on these funds for maintenance and growth.

Activity with the Bangladeshi-Italian community
As a veteran Italian resident, Dr Lasker led a pioneering role in helping other Bangladeshi migrants settle in Italy during 1990s and 2000s. Following Lasker’s retirement from FAO, he devoted time and money to help young, often poor Bangladeshi migrants to integrate within the Rome community. He financed and sponsored particularly men that came from poor backgrounds looking to get out of the poverty trap from Bangladesh. He helped finance some local businesses, including internet services, restaurants, grocery and travel agencies, with the main objective of helping create a viable future for the community. Today, the area where he established his businesses, Torpignattara, is today the heart of a thriving Bangladeshi community in the city of Rome.

Other positions of responsibility

 * He established a Programme for Literacy and Economic Advancement (PLEA) of street children in association with his niece.
 * As a founding shareholder of the National Housing and Investment Limited he is helping the financing of building of houses in the private sector for the first time in Bangladesh.
 * Dr Lasker is a life member of the greater Faridpur Services Welfare Association in Dhaka. He is also a life member of the Bangladesh Economics Association.
 * He was the convener and founder adviser of the Gopalganj Association in Rome, and advisor to the Bangladesh Association in ltaly.
 * He sponsored the popular monthly magazine "Romer Shomoi" in Bengali and wrote the background document on Gopalganj for its twin city agreement with Florence for the Embassy of Bangladesh in Italy.
 * He acted as juror in London and attended several sessions of the Committee on Commodities of the House of Lords on behalf of Commonwealth Secretariat.