Prof Abdullah Abu Sayeed is a famous TV presenter and a social activist. He is also an author. He has changed reading habits of Bangladeshis through his efforts over the last two decades. Currently he is chairman of Bishwa Sahitya Kendra. Through this institute, he attempts to keep alive the wealthy Bengali literary way of life.
He was born in Kolkata in 1939. He earned the diploma of BA and MA in Bengali from university of Dhaka in 1960 and 1961 respectively. He was a teacher at Dhaka College for more than three decades. In the mid 1970s, he started supplying Shaptabarna (Seven hues), a TV show. The show became an instant hit and he became a household name.
His commitment to reignite the enthusiasm for perusing books among the adolescent and youths drove him to establish the World Literature Center in 1978. It began with 25 college understudies perusing and talking about incredible works of writing in an Enrichment Program and in the long run developed to incorporate secondary school understudies under his stewardship. With the assistance of the Ministry of Education, his Enrichment and Development of Reading Habit Program spread all over Dhaka and in the end all over Bangladesh. Today, this activism has spread to 11,500 schools in each of the 64 districts.
In 1998, Prof Sayeed dispatched a countrywide portable library program because of the absence of open libraries in Bangladesh. Around 160,000 people took service of the portable library program which conveys 3,74,000 books.
In 2004, he was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts in acknowledgment of his work. He received various recompenses close to this all through his life including the National Television Award in 1977, Ekushey Padak in 2005 and Bangla Academy Award in 2011.