Mental Health in Bangladesh.
Despite affecting millions of people worldwide, mental health is still a taboo subject in Bangladesh. The lack of information and mental health practitioners leads people to seek help from traditional healers, with damaging and potentially fatal consequences.
Bangladesh has very limited mental health services, making it difficult for many people to access the support they need. In this gap, harmful myths and misunderstandings about mental health often spread, including beliefs that people with mental illness are possessed by evil spirits or the devil.
To address some of these issues, in our previous work on mental health in Bangladesh, we supported disability justice activists with funding to conduct community awareness programs, mental health camps, and advocacy programs to influence policy change.
This built a strong foundation in advocacy, which led to government agreeing to discuss progress in implementing mental health laws, policies, and plans.
Participatory Grant-Making in Mental Health.
The first pilot of participatory grant-making of the Bangladesh Mental Health Collaborative Fund took place between 2024-2025. Through the participatory grantmaking approach, seven Organisations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs) received and managed funds directly, they designed and lead their own activities based on the needs of their communities.
This approach has helped strengthen their organisations and build confidence in leading their own work. From the grants received, the organisations have greatly improved their advocacy work for disability justice and mental health at the local level. They have supported people with disabilities to access national identity cards and government disability allowances.
“This time’s participatory grant-making design workshop was a bit different. The entire workshop was conducted by the representatives of organisations of persons with disabilities. I myself was responsible for facilitating one session. I was very thrilled. Initially, my confidence was a bit low, but others encouraged me.”
Tani, Disability Justice Activist, Bangladesh.
They started income-generating activities to support their work and members. These included fish and chicken farming, clean water delivery, tailoring, and boat rentals. They also organised health camps and community activities focused on mental health.
After implementing the first phase of the participatory grant-making pilot, the organisations decided to meet and share their gained experiences lessons learned.
Together, they also began planning for the next phase of the grant. The workshop created space for the organisations to learn from one another and strengthen their efforts to lead work on disability justice and mental health in their communities.
“As young people with disabilities, we can take the lead. I never imagined that I could work as an OPD’s general secretary. Implementing the participatory grant-making project over the past year has given me a lot of experience, particularly in project planning. I want to focus even more on helping young people with disabilities like me develop their leadership skills if we receive funds for the upcoming phase.”
Parhana, Disability Justice Activist, Bangladesh.
Plans for the second phase of grant-making are underway and disability justice activists and organisations will work collaboratively to decide how to use the funds that will be given to them. They will also decide what projects to implement beyond mental health.
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PARTICIPATORY GRANT-MAKING
Participatory grant-making is a different approach to giving out money as grants where the people receiving the money also get to say how much is given to whom, and how it is spent.
MTIRIRIKO – ADD’S STRATEGY
We named our strategy mtiririko which means ‘flow’ in Swahili because we want to see resources flow to disability justice movements as result of the work that we all do.