Faith Bangladesh

faith Bangladesh
Native name	ফেইথ বাংলাদেশ
Website
https://www.faithbangladesh.org/

Foundation for Advancement of Innovations in Technology and Health, Bangladesh [faith Bangladesh] is a registered not-for profit organization based in Bangladesh which envisions a planet where people living in resource-poor communities will enjoy advancement of innovations relating to health and technology.

Our Values

• Integrity - We are a responsible and accountable organization, committed to the highest standards of manners.
• Creativity - We are driven by creative thoughts in every aspect of organization.
• Excellence - We are single-minded in our pursuit of service, research and training empowered by innovative technologies.

What We Do?

• Advance innovative Technology
• Provide health related Services
• Offer Education and Training
• Conduct health Research

Technological Advancement

Whether services, training or research; we explore, adopt and advance innovative ideas, techniques, new models—and work hard to make them accessible and affordable to people especially for those living in resource poor communities.

We have-

• Introduced the first ever Online Portal System for Special Child Care in Bangladesh which ensures easy and smooth access to services, and also paves huge opportunity for future research on autism in Bangladesh.
• Developed e-Learning platform to popularize distant education and training in Bangladesh.

Education & Training

We prioritize, organize, conduct and evaluate trainings for individuals and professionals aligned with our missions. Few of the offered trainings are:

• Training of Trainers (ToT) for professionals: 36 participants trained
• Capacity building of health care providers working at rural areas: Over 400 Rural Medical Practitioners from 47 districts of Bangladesh trained through a collaborative training project.
• Training and workshop for professionals and caregivers of special children: 38 professionals and 88 parents trained on Sensory Integration.
• Technical assistance in capacity development of collaborative organizations
• Training on Gender Diversity

Field Experience on Programs

faith Bangladesh provides mentoring and administrative support to national and international students to assist them gaining practical field experience. We offer students to work with our experts and also extend support to work with collaborative organizations. Mention could be made that faith Bangladesh is one of the international sites of Brown University, USA for its students’ field experience under Minority Health and Health Disparities International Research Training (MHIRT) Program.

faith Bangladesh also works collaboratively with the largest global research and training institution – icddr,b and Orbis International- a global eye care organization known for its Flying Eye Hospital and helped in refreshing the Rural Medical Practitioners involved in primary care and referral of eye care patients in the eye hospitals. To date over 2000 RMPs trained through these efforts.

Research Activities

Systematic Review and Dissemination Through conduction and dissemination of high quality systematic reviews and meta-analyses, we promote the use of research evidence in decision-making for health policy development. Our recent publications are:

“Autism Spectrum disorders (ASD) in South Asia: a systematic review” published in the prestigious BMC Psychiatry Journal. Mohammad Didar Hossain, Helal Uddin Ahmed, M M Jalal Uddin, Waziul Alam Chowdhury, Mohd S Iqbal, Razin Iqbal Kabir, Imran Ahmed Chowdhury, Afzal Aftab, Pran Gopal Datta, Golam Rabbani, Saima Wazed Hossain and Malabika Sarker http://faithbangladesh.org/images/uploads/coursecontent/Hossain_et_al-2017-BMC_Psychiatry.pdf Suicide and depression in the World Health Organization South-East Asia Region: a systematic review published in WHO South-East Asia Journal of Public Health | April 2017 | 6(1) Helal Uddin Ahmed, Mohammad Didar Hossain, Afzal Aftab, Tanjir Rashid Soron, Mohammad Tariqul Alam, Md Waziul Alam Chowdhury, Aftab Uddin.

Humanitarian activities performed by faith Bangladesh

We organize Medical Campaign at rural and hard to reach areas to treat and distribute medicines free of cost among disadvantaged people. We also distribute blankets during every winter to deprived people to help the distressed people during the natural disasters.

Networking and Media Communications

We participate in disseminating various public health issues through print and mass media regularly in the form of Talk Show, Health Talk, and Round Table Discussion etc. to create mass awareness. For organizing promotional events and networking support, we are thankful to our collaborators: icddr,b, Orbis International, Brown University, SOCH India, Public Health Foundation of Bangladesh.

Services for Special Children – The Unique Service Delivery Center

Now a day, autism spectrum disorder along with other neuro-developmental disorders has become a serious public health concern throughout the world and it is more challengeable for a developing country like Bangladesh. According to WHO, 1 in every 160 children presents the criteria of autism worldwide. Bangladesh Government has taken special initiative to create facilities, increase awareness, and develop skilled personnel to overcome this public health concern. However, still there is a big gap to address the demand and there is lot to do in terms of quality services and research on Autism. With a view to create a sustainable environment of high quality services for persons with ASD and empower caregivers, parents and neighbors, faith Bangladesh initiated a project “Assistance for Social Integration of children with autism (ASICA)” in Bangladesh. A center for Special Child Care (SCC) has been established by the initiative of faith Bangladesh executive committee members. We sincerely acknowledge Al-Arafah Islami Bank Limited for providing a SME loan of BDT 500,000 which helped faith Bangladesh a lot to establish a Special Child Care (SCC) Centre at Mohammadpur, Dhaka. This has become a model of enterprise in health sector to address the needs for the Special Children in the country. We gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the bank to sanction the SME loan in such a rare sector. With support from Al-Arafah Islami Bank Limited, under the ASICA project, we are providing-

• Speech & language Therapy
• Occupational Therapy
• Parents Centered Group Therapy
• Psychotherapy
• Referral Services
• Knowledge and Experience Sharing Events among Parents
• School-Based Screening Program
• Community-Based Awareness Program
• National level Advocacy Program involving Mass and Print Media

Therapeutic services are provided by experienced therapists who have 4 years long B.Sc. degree either in Speech and Language therapy or Occupational Therapy from CRP (Centre for the Rehabilitation of the Paralyzed) under the University of Dhaka. At present we have three (3) full time Clinical Occupational Therapists and two (2) full time Speech and Language Therapists. In addition, there are 4 more part-time therapists involved in special child care. Every day, on an average 30 children get benefit from our therapeutic sessions. Each session is of 45 minutes. faith Bangladesh has been conducting innovative Parents Centered Group Therapy which helps socialize children and, also empowers parents/ caregivers. Knowledge, Experience Sharing and Education Session among Parents/ Caregivers which brings all parents/caregivers under a common umbrella where skilled and experienced parents share their expertise and experience among themselves and help reduce suffering from many problems of daily living. This is free of cost and open for all parents having special need children. Over the last six months, a total of 278 parents have been benefitted through 9 sessions. Through various charitable programs like School-Based and Community-Based Awareness Program, we periodically assess child’s physical growth, psychological development and create awareness among parents. We have organized various promotional activities for special children support and development of their potential and advocacy meetings with schools, institutions and professional bodies and associations for policy changes. Last year, we conducted a community based assessment campaign for special children at a rural remote village of Naogaon District on December 2016. The objectives of the campaign were to create awareness among the rural people regarding special child care, assess speech & language difficulties among the special children in a selected union and make their caregivers aware about the importance of early intervention. A total of 32 children were assessed. faith Bangladesh started its services in full swing since last one and half year. As of today, over 800 Special Child has received quality care and services from the Special Child Care Center under the ASICA project. In future we expect around 100,000 Special children will be brought under these services and around 200,000 parents will be educated in special care, parenting and education of Special Children.

Brighter Life School

*Brighter Life School is one of the sister concern of Foundation for Advancement of Innovations in Technology and Health (faith) Bangladesh. Alligned with the vision, mission, mandates and values of faith Bangladesh, this school aims to provide quality education to special needs children in Bangladesh.

Vision: Accelerating solution for tomorrow for the special needs Children.

Activities:

• Provide education and training to special needs children to make them self-reliant.
• Explore the identifies their potentials and prepare them for future productive life.
• Creates employment opportunities and deploys special needs children..

Funding of faith Bangladesh

faith Bangladesh does not have any donor or aid agency. Its monthly operating cost usually comes from therapeutic services, research, training, and from the contributions of the founder members of the executive committee.

Future Plan of faith Bangladesh

• Expansion of Special Child Care Center based services in Dhaka city and other divisional towns
• Conduct assessment of the situation of Special Children in Bangladesh
• Establishment of e-Consultation or tele-consultation center
• Set up Physiotherapy center
• Organization of District-wise awareness program on Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
• Capacity building of caretakers, service providers through training and Continuous Medical Education
• Establish Training and Resource Center for training of various categories of service providers to serve the Special Children
• Organize community /School based primary care for Special Children and linkage with Special Child Care Centers of faith Bangladesh and other organizations
• Renovation of service center/facilities to convert and promoting “ Child Friendly Special Child Care Services”
• Set up IT enabled primary health care center to deliver primary eye care services, selective pathological services, asthma care, Special Child Care and referral services
• Establish faith Bangladesh Training and Research Center for the people with special needs and rehabilitation
• Increase collaboration with recognized institutes to develop capacity of the organization for capacity building of other organizations offering services and care to Special Children
• Participate in the national survey and research on technology based health care and services
• Develop a network of community based Rural Medical Practitioners to promote and provide rationale health care for the poor people
• Develop faith Bangladesh fund raising strategy and mechanism to mobilize financial resources to operationalize the future plan

External links

• Official website
• faith Blog
• faith News Portal
• Brighter Life School
• Survey & Data Collection