BangladeshBangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. While it has made huge strides in reducing poverty over the past three decades, roughly 20% of the country still lives below the poverty line. A low-lying country with rich agricultural heritage, Bangladesh is exceptionally vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and natural disasters such as floods and cyclones. It is also at a high risk of earthquakes.United Purpose (UP) has worked in... Read More
Bangladesh
Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. While it has made huge strides in reducing poverty over the past three decades, roughly 20% of the country still lives below the poverty line. A low-lying country with rich agricultural heritage, Bangladesh is exceptionally vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and natural disasters such as floods and cyclones. It is also at a high risk of earthquakes.
United Purpose (UP) has worked in Bangladesh for more than 25 years. As an organisation that focuses on community designed and led programming, our strength comes from our commitment to building close partnerships with community stakeholders and leaders to enable people to express agency over their own lives – so they can move Beyond Aid.
Across Bangladesh, UP works primarily through grassroots enterprise hubs known as youth or women’s business centres. These networks of women-led centres enable a unique, enterprise-based programming approach, which seeks to address some of the greatest challenges to sustainable development. In humanitarian contexts where enterprise is not possible, UP leverages similar community management approaches to position our community partners as agents of change.
Map of where we work:
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You can read our Annual Reports here (link coming soon) or watch a short film about our Women’s Business Centres to the right.
Current projects
Supporting ‘orphaned’ children and women-headed households
In the Chittagong Hill Tracts, children who have lost their father or both parents are often referred to as ‘orphaned’. They are particularly vulnerable to social and economic challenges. Widowed women heading up households often find it hard to earn a living and can face unique forms of stigma and discrimination within families and communities. Many of these children end up leaving school to work and support their family or because they cannot afford an education. With this in mind, we are supporting a community-led approach to improving care for these children and their families, connecting them with Government social protection services, a quality education and access to clean water, good toilets and decent handwashing facilities.
Nutrition governance
Through the five-year, ‘Leadership to Ensure Adequate Nutrition’ project in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, funded by the European Commission and implemented in consortium, UP aims to improve maternal and child nutrition in three core areas:
· Improved nutrition governance
· Increased community-led nutrition awareness
· Strengthened local value chains
To achieve this, UP is training local leaders through the Women’s Business Centres to disseminate relevant nutrition information, which is supported by more than 4,000 adolescent and student groups.
Leadership to Adequate Nutrition (LEAN) project - success stories
COVID-19 response and recovery
United Purpose is providing technical advice and expertise to a National Development Programme project that is increasing urban communities’ resilience to COVID-19 and its impact in 17 wards of Sirajganj municipality. The project is providing cash grants and training to help people kick-start income generation again. It is also improving communities’ access to clean water by rehabilitating infrastructure, installing solar powered water pumps and rainwater harvesting stations. Classrooms at two schools are being renovated, community meetings are being organised to discuss various wellbeing issues and advocacy meetings organised with the authorities to secure better health access for all.
Women’s business centres: building on their successes
Our women’s business centres have emerged as a model for organising enterprising women into cooperative business structures. Made possible with funding from organisations like the European Union,Coca-Cola, USAID, and the German development agency GIZ, they equip women with the means to gain control of their lives. Now we’re building on their successes.
Nari Jhuri ‘Women’s Basket’ social enterprise network
We’ve created the Nari Jhuri “Women’s Basket” Social Enterprise Network. It facilitates access to new forms of capital - including impact investment, revenue from product sales and service delivery – with the collective purchasing power of thousands of women entrepreneurs.
Sustainability towards Health and Economic Recovery (SHER)
We’re currently expanding and adapting the Nari Jhuri network to Bangladesh’s under-resourced Haor area to support the economic development and wellbeing of 40,000 women producers there. The women’s business network will be integrated with Government social protection schemes and poverty eradication programming.
Women business centres and innovative financing for upland water management in Chittagong Hill Tracts,
We are also working with seven women’s business centres in the Chittagong Hill Tracts to improve remote, low-income communities’ access to sustainable safe water. With local government supervision and oversight, we’re constructing or rehabilitating seven public water supply schemes for 5,000 people and taking a market-based approach to provide another 5,000 people with access to domestic water filters. The women’s business centres will manage the schemes, using a community-based enterprise model. The aim is to demonstrate appropriate service delivery models that can be replicated in other communities. Learn more by visiting www.womensbusinesscentres.org
Humanitarian response for Rohingya
UP runs a suite of health, protection and education projects in the Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar. Funded by Penny Appeal, this ongoing work maintains health posts and water distribution points in key areas of the Rohingya camps, and disseminates community-led protection and health resources in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also provides wellbeing and psychosocial support for Rohingya children and youth through the installation of playground and football equipment and the staffing of child friendly spaces.
Cox’s Bazar – strengthening resilience in host communities
Our IOM- and SAFEPlus-funded ICRA project seeks to build the capacity of the extreme poor, marginalised women and vulnerable households among host communities in Cox’s Bazar. UP is equipping these groups, affected by the arrival of Rohingya refugees and the COVID-19 pandemic, with the tools, skills and capital to become micro-entrepreneurs and to develop gender-sensitive, market-adaptive business cooperatives. Through this project, UP continues to provide families with life-saving COVID-19 assistance.
Strengthening disaster management
Bangladesh has a long history of natural disasters. When disasters occur, the poorest communities are always hit hardest.
To support Bangladesh’s preparedness for earthquakes and increase national capacity and coordination of disaster management, UP, in partnership with ActionAid Bangladesh and with funding from ECHO, is implementing the SUPER project. This contributes to strengthened earthquake disaster risk management for urban communities. We are doing this by building capacity in the private sector and facilitating cooperation with the public sector.
In southern and southwestern cyclone-prone coastal regions, we are also working with local disaster management committees', community-based organisations and communities on cyclone forecasts to ensure early action is taken and that this is linked to existing social protection systems.
We are also providing emergency humanitarian assistance to meet the immediate basic needs of communities in flood-affected Sylhet and Sunamganj districts. We are restoring and increasing their access to safe water and decent sanitation facilities. We’re also working to improve good hygiene practices, restore safe shelter and reduce their protection risks.
Bangladesh Contact Details
Country Director: Sriramappa Gonchikara
House 26 (3rd and 4th floor), R#28, Block K, Banani, Dhaka 1213, Bangladesh
T: +88 02 9855296
BangladeshBangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. While it has made huge strides in reducing poverty over the past three decades, roughly 20% of the country still lives below the poverty line. A low-lying country with rich agricultural heritage, Bangladesh is exceptionally vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and natural disasters such as floods and cyclones. It is also at a high risk of earthquakes.United Purpose (UP) has worked in... Read More
