Impact

Success stories

The people in this section came to us for one thing and then built something of their own. Their accounts are published with their agreement.

A charity's own reports are never the fairest test of its work. What people did afterwards is. Jharna Begum was given a single goat under the 2022 self-reliance project and now keeps a herd, having lost three animals to disease along the way. Anhar opened a pharmacy with a small grant. Masud, raising a disabled son alone, strengthened his chotpoti stall. Nush'hika Akter is still at school, still supported, and still planning to make her father proud.

We publish these accounts in the family's own detail, including the setbacks, because a story with the difficult parts removed is not evidence of anything.

How these accounts are gathered

A member of the team visits, asks what happened in the person's own order rather than ours, writes it down, and reads it back before anything is published. Where the account is given in Bengali we publish the Bengali and add an English summary, rather than replacing the person's words with a translation of them.

Nobody is paid or pressured to appear here, and a refusal changes nothing about the support they receive. Photographs are taken with permission and can be withdrawn at any time by the person in them or their family. Children are named only where a parent has agreed in writing.

We include the failures inside the stories: the three goats that died, the years when nothing much changed. A story with the difficult parts taken out is not evidence that a program works.