Uttaran Foundation

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History of Uttaran Foundation

The Gypsies (Bedes) are a marginalized group in Bangladesh. The majority of the gypsies’ lives are dependent on snake related tiny businesses, such as snake charming (dancing), snake catching, snake selling, etc. They also sell lucky heathers, herbal medicines, which they claim have magical powers. The other occupations of gypsies are the entertaining services (e.g. monkey-show, magic-show) and petty trading. Many villagers believe in the magical powers of the gypsies. They claim they can make evil spirits out from someone's body if their magical powers are used. Some of them beg on the busy streets of big cities like Dhaka, Chittagong and Khulna etc. They speak in Bengali during the outdoors people, however they have native language as well named ‘Thar’ which is being used by them during the intra-community conversation. Most of them are Muslim, but also practice Hinduism, Shamanism and Animism along with Islam. About 98 percent gypsies live below the poverty line and about 95% Bede children do not attend school. Even, they do not have any kind of formal education and they do not use medical facilities.

Due to lack of equal opportunity and scope of low-income profession, they developed a substitute profession of various kinds of drug trading and fraudulent activities which have severely obstructed the law and order situation of the area with destabilizing the social harmony. Even the Dhaka district police administration also struggled a lot to enforce the laws on 'Savar Bede Palli'. The issue of this illegal drug trading activities of the gypsy community came in observation to the then Superintendent of Police of Dhaka District Mr. Habibur Rahman who is currently working as a Deputy Inspector General, BPM (Bar), PPM(Bar) in police with his deep insights. He came to know about the misconducts of the gypsy community and started to think about the underlying problems and solutions. To know more about them and the problems, he organized an opinion sharing meeting with the gypsies at Savar Police Station on 18 August 2014. The participants among the gypsy community shared their sorrows and stigma of itinerant lives and livelihoods that they went through for generations without care and support from anyone.

Mr. Habibur Rahman heard the untold sufferings of the gypsy community. He realized that arresting few criminals will be a temporary solution for the problem. Rather, he decided to work with the root causes. He was inspired to do something beyond his policing job. The community also stated that, they wanted to break the cycle for a long time and they are looking for an alternative employment opportunity, but no one has come to rescue them. Mr. Habibur Rahman has started to transfer his thoughts into action by initiating skill training to 105 gypsy women with the cooperation of Govt. Youth Development Department. After the training, sewing machines were distributed among the trainees with the support of Bangladesh Education & Technology Society (BETS) and few others. Gradually Mr. Habibur Rahman extends his cooperation through different initiatives i.e. anti-drug campaign, stopping of early marriage campaign, community mobilization activities on various social issues, response to the different types of crises, establishing of uttaran garments factory, uttaran education center, uttaran computer center, uttran boutiques and arranging some good jobs for the young people etc. towards a holistic development of the gypsy community in Bangladesh.

All these initiatives were the seeds of ‘Uttaran Foundation’, although ‘Uttaran Foundation’ was officially founded on 20th February in 2017 with the vision of ‘Equitable Lives and Livelihoods for the Gypsy Community.’ After the whole-hearted successful initiatives for the gypsies of Savar Bede Palli, the Uttaran Foundation has started to grow and spread its arms to the other marginalized communities like Third Gender (Hijra). In 2013, by the sole-initiative of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, popularly known as ‘Mother of Humanity’, the present government officially recognized ‘Third Gender’ people who were used to be called as Hijra. However, the said historic decision of the Government brought a positive change among the Third Gender community in terms of sourcing the alternative livelihoods. But the existing social system and practical culture were not supporting to lead them as a part of the mainstream society. The Founder & Chairman of Uttaran Foundation, Mr. Habibur Rahman was well concerned about the real-life situation of the Third Gender community. He was also thinking to do something for them long time. He invited few Leaders (Guru Maa) of Third Gender at his office and discussed the tentative measures towards a dignified life for them. After then Mr. Habibur Rahman established a Parlor namely Uttaran Beauty Parlour-1 at Ashulia in Dhaka through Uttaran Foundation which was a remarkable initiative and currently implementing many activities for them.

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