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This Reference Handbook is made under the supervision of Education Department of ActionAid Bangladesh in an attempt to strengthen education rights and strengthen the right-based education movement. The main objective of which is to provide a quick source of information on the rights of education to every educational worker, constitutional and national responsibility for establishing rights, national and international commitments in education.

Doha COP18 will go down in history as the COP that incorporated Gender in the main negotiation text. The draft circulated co chairs of SBI Agenda 21, which was prepared with contributions from many, especially Mary Robinson, and circulated by EU, was opened for consultation on 29th of November. After two days of consultations among delegates from participating countries a draft text was submitted for consideration in SBI with the suggestions that it go to COP.

ActionAid Bangladesh, in association with experts, academicians, scientists and other stakeholders, conducted the study “Financing Local Adaptation: Ensuring Access for the Climate Vulnerable in Bangladesh”. It captures ground experiences to provide some guidelines for a structure that ensures equitability, transparency and effectiveness. AAB will remain dedicated for achieving justice and a climate-resilient future for those most at risk.

The first issue of our e-magazine captures our work that took place with support from partner NGOs as well as external development practitioners. We hope you find it interesting and appreciate the efforts of the authors as we as the members of editorial boards.

4th of August: a team of ‘humans’ leaves Dhaka in the early hours… destination a ‘popular’ place in Faridpur. Sightseeing? That and more… Trust me when I tell you that the visiting friends from Italy (a Comms. colleague, a holding-it-just-fine journalist and a how-do-I-put-it photographer) did taste a bit of Dhaka traffic even though all that they did was to touchdown, get terminal clearance and pick us (Jamal and Hamid – names we picked up along the way) up from home to leave the city.

After an hour and a half on Dhaka’s crowded roads where the kamikaze bus driver is king, I reach Chanpara slum in Roopgong, just outside of the Bangladeshi capital. The corrugated iron huts are home to 40,000 people – a small slum by Bangladeshi standards – but the problems faced by the residents of Chanpara slum are huge. With shared toilets and bathing areas, and no street lighting, the dark alleys of this slum hold many dangers for the women and girls of the slum.

… purpose, which was only their personal gain and nothing further. Youth were intentionally overlooked for long and it became a practice to accept the societal structure as it was. But being in the same system few youngsters were exceptions and broke the cycle as they decided not to be disregarded for their dreams anymore. Not only did they start a new trend followed by many others, they brought in immense development. Yes! It was the golden Era of Youth revolution and I was so thrilled to have witnessed it.

Being a non-government human rights-based development organization, we, ActionAid always prefers to play the role of facilitator in bringing change and supplement and complement the government’s initiative. Our conviction to work with the government was further strengthened while I was in Tala (sub-district) in Satkhira on 18th April, 2012 along with our Country Director, Farah Kabir. She was there to visit the activities of our ECHO-funded project Emergency Assistance Support to Water Logging Affected Populations in Tala of Satkhira.

We spent significant time on Board development and registration process. The Executive Board and Board Committees were engaged in institutional governance. We also developed Country Strategy Paper – IV and carried out change management. South Asia Social Forum was other major engagement. Besides regular work with long-term, strategic, network and project partners, we facilitated 94 Lokokendras (people’s organisations), 18 Self-Help Groups and 813 village farmers’ associations.

The recent experience from the field-visit to Faridpur has sketched deep mark on my mind when I saw community people reaping the benefit of the initiatives at the very inception of a project because of comprehensiveness and farsightedness in the plan. It was a cluster village comprising 10 newly-constructed tin-shed houses on raised plinth with a sanitary latrine for each, four deep tube-wells, cattle and homestead garden under Sukur Sikdarer Dangi village in Faridpur Sadar Upazila (sub-district)

Farah Kabir, ActionAid Bangladesh’s Country Director Farah was speaking in a talk jointly organized by ActionAid and Expo 2015 in the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro on June 17. Participants discussed how to bring changes in the food production system in order to eradicate hunger and, in the process, promote women’s rights and protect the environment mitigating climate change impacts.

We have been doing development work in Bangladesh for the last 29 years and have achieved amazing feats. In last 10 years we carried out significant work in transforming national policies that affected millions of Bangladeshi citizens. Seven brief stories inside will portray how people themselves could struggle and change policies and why we need to be more closely engaged and work with them in transforming their lives… We believe this publication will inspire and show direction to others who are committed to the vision – “people challenging poverty and exclusion