Ehsan Hoque

In 1995, Hoque started supporting the education of 50 children to save them from child labor, and in the process realized a more systematic approach was necessary to help the many more children suffering the same fate in Bangladesh and elsewhere. This inspired him to form a non-governmental organization to prevent school dropouts on a large scale by providing comprehensive support through child sponsorship, creating a safety net, and involving school authorities and the community in the process.

In 2003, while working at Yale University, together with his wife Nina Hoque and his colleague Dr. Brian DeBroff he founded Distressed Children & Infants International, or DCI. The organization's mission is to reduce the extreme poverty that contributes to child labor by providing quality education, family support, and access to healthcare with a focus on eliminating preventable blindness.

Hoque founded DCI's Sun Child Sponsorship Program, which now supports over 1500 children in Bangladesh. DCI operates several other programs in Bangladesh that provide healthcare, vision care, and orphan support, and also provides support to partner organizations with similar missions in India, Nepal, and Nicaragua. These efforts have benefited thousands of children and their families while also providing opportunities for American youth to connect with less fortunate around the world through volunteerism: a central organizational concept to DCI that Hoque calls "children helping children".

The program runs a biennial Conference on Child Rights & Sight: an international conference hosted by DCI and Yale University to raise awareness about child rights, particularly with respect to child labor, and diseases that affect vision. The event gathers speakers and leaders from around the world to address these issues and discuss creative solutions. The 7th conference took place at Yale in October 2019. Provided by Wikipedia