Bandhu Social Welfare Society (Bandhu) was established in 1996 and has since then Bandhu is sincerely serving the sexually marginalized community to obtain social justice, and equality. Today Bandhu is a distinguished NGO in Bangladesh and is successfully implementing many projects including Global Fund Programs. Amongst many projects of Bandhu, MSA project is one of the significant projects that is contributing to Community System Strengthening (CSS). As a part of CSS, Bandhu disbursed advocacy seed fund grant to 10 local CBOs in two rounds developing advocacy related policy environment at local and national level. The first round ended in September 2015 and 2nd round is ongoing. Through these small scale interventions, the CBOs gathered practical knowledge of program implementation at local level. It assisted them to showcase their minimum capacity and leadership skills that they achieved under the MSA grant. In December 2015, a national level KP network is under formation that reflects the achievements of community mobilization. In addition, Hijra Pride 2015 was celebrated by Diner Alo Hijra Sangha on 27th November 2015 at Rajshahi with technical support of Bandhu.

However, the reporting period July-December 2015 ended with successful achievements. The 5th Media Fellowship was awarded to 10 journalists and electronic media that was another supplementary event for effective advocacy works. Mr. Matiur Rahman, Editor, The Daily Prothom Alo and His Excellency Mr. Johan Frisell, Ambassador, Embassy of Sweden attended the closing ceremony and praised for involving media journalist through Media Fellowship. Ain Alap – the legal helpline corner has meaningfully contributed to the legal needs of the community and successfully settled a number of rights violation cases with service supports of NHRC. Bandhu has introduced a new activity involving the City Mayors at Divisional Level City Corporations. This activity helps City Mayors to gather appropriate information about hijra community and they made commitment to ensure support and services to hijra in the future. A total of 6 Resource Mobilization Strategies were developed with the support of APCOM and Barapani, India. These Strategies are helping different CBOs to move forward and generating resources for future Community System Strengthening. In addition, a number of Capacity Building trainings were provided to the targeted
beneficiaries as a part of regular capacity building training.

Team effort of MSA project staffs along with timely and appropriate guideline, suggestions and feedbacks of UNDP is the secret to achieve the intended results.

For Details Report, Please click this below link-

Half Yearly Report_July to December 2015 _ MSA_BSWS