Community Welfare Foundation (CWF) is a Bangladeshi non-governmental organization (NGO) which aims to help people in remote and unaddressed communities to reach their full potential. Established in 1985, as a Social Development Organization, started its journey with the aims of with a vision of an impartial society where everyone would be able to fulfill their demands regardless of race, class, gender or religion. CWF believes that all people have the rights to a basic standard of living, where the poor and the underprivileged population particularly women should not be isolated from the mainstream of development trend. In order to achieve the goal, CWF remained committed to serve the oppressed, the poor and the vulnerable communities by promoting full human transformation and bring positive changes in their lives leading to a holistic sustainable development. CWF also relentlessly responded to the needs of the potential target communities, in case of natural and/or human made emergencies by supporting physically, mentally and environmentally. CWF always focused on enhancing moral and spiritual values that assist the community to lead a peaceful life with dignity, respect, hope and humility. CWF has been working for nearly 36 years to address the needs of the remote and marginalized communities of Bangladesh. Over that period, CWF has grown from being a distant dream to become an organization delivering integrated services in sector like Health, Basic and Non Formal Education, Rights, Good Governance, Livelihood, Disaster Management and Women Empowerment with population coverage of about 1.5 million.

CWF has been working beyond continuing to respond to the immediate needs of marginalized communities, planning to demonstrate needs-based integrated multi-sector approach as an effective means of enabling remote communities to gain strength and stand on their own feet. As a result, CWF scaled up operations to the extent necessary to demonstrate the credibility- not simply to achieve growth for growth’s sake. The model(s) can be further replicated and applied on a much larger scale by governments and other NGOs to achieve more widespread impact. To help achieve this, CWF continues and extend communications and cooperation with the government at all levels be it local, regional or national. Other approaches and strategies include Working in Partnership, Promoting Empowerment, Providing Essential Services, Facilitating Enable Environment and Advocacy.

CWF obtained its legal status by registering with the Social Welfare Department, NGO Affairs Bureau and Department of Women Affairs.

CWF, ensures that the full range of services required for integrated development is made available, either by CWF itself or through linkages with government or other national & international donor agencies & constantly improve the level of quality of services & advocate and promote the integration of working patterns and service delivery models, or relevant elements thereof, into the national public service delivery system of Bangladesh, particularly in Health, Women Empowerment, Rights and Governance, Climate Change, Livelihood, Disaster Management, Non Formal Education, Food Security about the effectiveness and sustainability of a needs-based, integrated development model in order to promote its adoption by the wider community of public and private development actors.

CWF recognized that in the hard to reach and remote areas of Bangladesh, providing quality services is challenging and hectic. To implement a comprehensive service delivery system in marginalized communities of hard-to-reach areas and maintain strong interaction with government and other partners to take forward the national road map, CWF started working in close collaboration with the local communities which it serves in order to identify their needs. The needs-based approach aims to promote ownership by the local communities and thus local communities have ownership of the decisions made about the services to be provided.  

The CWF has gained substantial experience and strengths in managing different projects and providing services to the vulnerable communities both in the urban, semi-urban and rural remotes areas through its 35 years of working experiences. In the process of implementation of the projects/programs, CWF continually focuses on strategic planning process. The initial plan was built upon and refreshed to cover the period the consecutive years taking into consideration the challenges, external circumstances, experience gained and achievements gathered. It supports CWF plan ahead to identify specific goals and how to achieve them & thus build and develop the platform and infrastructure necessary to ensure that services continued to be delivered successfully in the long term. It also supports to secure well in advance the financial and other resources required to support and deliver planned activities and respond to the questions of partners, sponsors and donors. CWF believes in seeing and believing of tangible progress that has been achieved in further strengthening organization and improving management processes. To note that other support services are also developed and placed to stimulate the overall program management. As CWF grows, however, the organization constantly reminds the team that CWF’s mission is not to build a bigger organization, but to strengthen the communities in which we work and help our beneficiaries gain control over their lives.

To further the impact of the interventions, CWF also worked, with its own initiative, with the poor and marginalized population. In addition to health projects, CWF gained experience on Empowerment and Rights, Protect Violence against Women, Access to Justice, Providing Legal Aid, Water, Sanitation and Arsenic, Disaster Management, Climate Change, Disable Population, Democracy and Governance, Income Generation Activities etc. Currently CWF has been operating 4 projects in 2 Divisions, Khulna and Rangpur by covering 4 Districts. Near about 100 energetic and dedicated employees are engaged in CWF family with having a well-equipped Head Office in Khulna of 3,500 square feet and a Liaison Office in Dhaka of 1,600 square feet with all modern facilities including training venue. CWF’s last fiscal year’s Annual Turn Over is approximately BDT 10,900,000.00 (One Hundred and Nine Million Taka Only).