Spotlight: Bandhu Social Welfare Society

Bandhu Social Welfare Society, often called Bandhu, envisions a Bangladesh where every person, irrespective of their gender and sexuality, is able to lead a quality life with dignity, human rights and social justice.

Bandhu has more than 19 years of experience implementing health and rights-based programmes and projects through multiple funding agencies focusing on issues related to marginalized sexual and gender minorities. HIV prevention interventions for MSM and transgender populations has always been the focus area of the organization, with HIV preventive services first conducted in 1997.

Bandhu’s current geographical coverage of the programme in 22 districts in the country brings about more than 19,000 MSM and transgender populace under service safety net through 34 field offices. As a part of community system strengthening efforts, Bandhu has been working towards capacity building of 23 MSM and transgender community-based organizations (CBOs).

Bandhu is one of the national sub-recipients of the Multi-Country South Asia Global Fund HIV Programme, in which APCOM acts as regional sub-recipient. Under the Programme, Bandhu has participated in separate training on resource mobilisation, monitoring and evaluation and programme management provided by APCOM.  Also under APCOM’s assistance, Bandhu succeeded to equip its governance with SOP and Risk Management Policy.

To learn more about Bandhu, visit their website at http://www.bandhu-bd.org/