What We Do
ECDO is working for the welfare of different ethnic communities in Sylhet region. Their intervention communities are Manipuri, Khasi, Patro, Tea-worker and other small minority communities who are living under poverty line.
Ethnic Community Development Organization was formed on December 25th 2002. It is a rights based organization working with Ethnic communities. As ECDO’s staff are all indigenous people themselves, ECDO as an organization benefits from having a unique link and bond of trust with it’s target beneficiaries. ECDO undertook, and maintains an extensive consultative process with the indigenous communities, to discover and discuss what they feel they need assistance with towards their development.
Based on this, ECDO addresses its beneficiaries problems through helping the community to provide sustainable access to basic services such as health, education, water and sanitation, HIV/AIDS awareness and human rights. It operates in 18 villages/punjees in Jaintapur, Goainghat and Sylhet Upazilla’s in the North East of Bangladesh.
ECDO has four full time staff, a full time VSO Volunteer, and two part time staff working out of the Sylhet office. Of these staff, three are female and four are male. In addition the organization employs three teachers for its ESC (Education Support Centre.) ECDO has a total of 18 community volunteers, of these, 5 are women and 13 are men.
Today ECDO runs three main programs, which can be summarized as:
- Promoting education for all in indigenous communities through Education Support Centres, a Global Art Exchange with a primary school in the UK, and Education Materials Distribution.
- Ensuring access to health facilities through medical camps and raising awareness about HIV/AIDS. In addition ECDO raises awareness on reproductive health issues for mothers and their new-born children
- Water and sanitation programs which includes awareness raising workshops about sanitation and the delivery of five Rain Water Harvesting Plants to provide an arsenic and other bacteria-free source of water for the indigenous people.
ECDO also operates a Research and Publications wing and publishes annual Journals, Newsletters and IEC/BCC Materials.
Some major outcomes of ECDO’s work since December 2002
- More than 300 indigenous children (Khasi, Patro, Tea labour) have received free educational materials.
- Sixty-five indigenous children are studying in two Education Support Centers.
- Twenty-five students participate in Global Art Exchange an opportunity for Manipuri children to learn artistic skills and exchange Manipuri culture through the medium of art with two English primary schools.
- More than 100 indigenous women have participated in different HIV/AIDS counseling workshops.
- Five hundred indigenous women, men and children have received professional medical advice and free medicine from annual medical camps.
- More than 500 indigenous people from the Patro, Khasi, Tea Labour and Mahali communities have benefited from five Rain Water Harvesting Plants and now have access to safe drinking water.
- Ninety-two primary school students have taken part in hygiene awareness workshops.
- The problems faced by indigenous communities in the North East are becoming more familiar to different stakeholders.