Your support is offering a lifeline to street dwellers in Bangladesh

Our 12 centres in Dhaka and nearby Chittagong City are welcoming as many as 260 people every month – specifically women and children who have been living in poverty and danger on the streets. We’re giving them fresh drinking water, regular meals, healthcare and, above all, a place to be safe. 

Nazma Begum and her daughter Suraiya lived on the streets in Dhaka before finding our centre in the Paltan district. They had no security, no shelter and no access to sanitation. Suraiya could use the bathroom at her school, but Nazma had to wait until darkness and use the drains.

Thanks to your support, Nazma has been able to pull her family out of poverty and she now runs a successful catering company from her small home in Dhaka. And Suraiya is the president of the local Youth Committee run by Concern – raising awareness of domestic violence and child marriage.

Giving people dignity and basic citizen's rights is another crucial role for our centres – staff help mothers get birth registration certificates for their children, and national identity cards, and work to reduce the social stigma around the most poor and vulnerable. It’s a truly life-changing programme – and, because of your support, we can continue to help families like Nazma’s leave the streets behind forever.     

Among the 2.8 million urban extreme poor in Bangladesh, pavement dwellers account for at least 4% or 112,000 people. Living in the harshest conditions, they are deprived of their socio-economic, political and human rights every day.

With limited or no access to shelter, healthcare, education, water, or sanitation, survival is a daily struggle. The need for centres like those run by Concern is great as they are the lifeline that families like Nazma and Suraiya need to survive.

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