Young people of Chanpara slum are very active in community work and take part in sports and cultural competition. ActionAid Bangladesh believes that these girls are the major vehicles of change and can inspire other women to transform their lives which will bring women empowerment.

Unpaid Care Work (UCW) is an inherently gendered phenomenon: a clear majority of uncompensated, unrecognised and undervalued care work is carried out by women. These works are essential for maintaining our society. Unpaid care work provides services that nurture other people and is costly in terms of time and energy. It refers to all the activities that go into caring for household members; it includes household chores, cooking, child care and care of ill and elderly persons, fetching water and collecting firewood. When this work is carried out in the person’s own home and is unpaid, it is not reflected in national statistics or economic analyses, despite its centrality to our day-to-day wellbeing. It is perceived less valuable than paid work and it is ignored and not considered to be “work” even by the women and men who engage in and get benefit directly from these activities. The burden of Unpaid Care Work affects all women but has the worst effects on women in poverty. For most women, time spent on Unpaid Care Work is disproportionately high compared to men. ActionAid Bangladesh is implementing “Promoting Opportunities for Women’s Empowerment and Rights” known as POWER project which long-term objective of the project is to contribute to increase economic empowerment of women. POWER project intends to create opportunities for women by recognizing, redistributing and reducing of UCW. In this background, ActionAid Bangladesh is going to organize a campaign program through holding a Short Film Making Competition on Unpaid Care Work.

ActionAid Bangladesh has been working towards empowering women and ending sexual violence against women of Bangladesh through various programs, projects and campaigns. “Safe Cities” is a new initiative by Action Aid that seeks to address violence against women in public spaces. The aim of the campaign is to make cities in Bangladesh safe for women and girls by reducing their experience and fear of sexual violence in urban public areas and by creating allies amongst men and boys through creating positive behavioral change. Through this campaign, first of all, women and girls will be aware of their right to live free from violence. Increased access to protection from police and legal aid services will empower survivors to seek support and legal redress. Secondly, men and boys will also gain knowledge on VAW and will know how to take measures to prevent such situations. Finally, change makers will have increased knowledge of processes and leadership skills required to make cities safe for women and are able to support and refer women affected by violence.

We are reminded more often than desirable that social attitude and behaviour is difficult to change. Violence against women (VAW) in Bangladesh is widespread. Its alarming growth over 2004-2009 prompted the government to come up with stringent measures like enactment of the Women and Children Repression Prevention Act 2002 (amended 2003), Domestic Violence (Prevention & Protection) Act 2010, Acid Control Act 2002 and Acid Crime Prevention Acts 2002. All these measures earned the government much appreciation both at home and aboard. Despite all these efforts, according to experts, the

An alternative model styled as “Budget Olympiad” was developed to popularize the budget discourse among the young people. Budget Olympiad is mainly a national level contest among young people and students to popularize and stimulate the national budgetary issue. After participating in the contests at local level and regional level, the qualified participants gather at National level to take part for final event. The winners are awarded as budget campaigners to move onward with their knowledge and concerns of budget literacy.

ActionAid Bangladesh organized a tax tribunal in 2018 to mobilize people around the issues of dependence of indirect tax as a key source of revenue which is a burden for the poor and corporate tax avoidance; and initiate a dialogue among stakeholders to demand progressive tax policies.

Taking the momentum of November 30, 2017- declared as Tax Day by the government of Bangladesh, a two-week action was planned at the local and national level around corporate taxes and its roles as a key source of revenue to fund public services. The core objectives of this campaign were to raise awareness and generate discussion around issues related to corporate tax avoidance, illicit financial flow and harmful tax incentives, role of corporate taxes as an alternate mechanism of revenue generation vis-à-vis indirect taxes such as VAT. The main demand was “Halt corporate tax avoidance and generate revenue from corporate taxes.”

Overview On Friday, March 15, 2019, in more than 100 countries , students participated in marches protesting inaction on climate change. Expressing solidarity with this global movement, more than 1000 students including children & young people participated in the youth-led demonstrations in Bangladesh as well.