20th February 2012

UN Global Compact

Hathay Bunano is proud to be a member of the UN Global Compact. The United Nations Global Compact is a strategic policy initiative for businesses that are committed to aligning their operations and strategies with ten universally accepted principles in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption. That sounds like a lot of talk but more broadly the idea is to encourage more businesses to follow the ten principles and to catalyse actions in support of broader UN goals such as the Millenium Development Goals.

Hathay Bunano works hard in particular towards MDG1 – to end poverty and hunger, by creating employment in rural areas where there is very little and during some seasons, no alternative employment. We aim to take work to the people and to operate in areas where women live and where there is no industry or employment at all. For example, we work in the far North of Bangladesh, in Dinajpur and Chilmari where access is difficult and its an 11 hour drive from Dhaka and the only alternative employment is agricultural work. Similarly we work on char islands which are in the river and surrounded by water, where there is no work at all and the inhabitants need 3tk for the boat ride every time they need to go to the mainland. In these cases we take work to the women and set up centres on those islands rather than expecting them to travel for their work.

The MDGs are very much interconnected in our work. By working hard towards MDG1 – to end poverty and hunger, we are also working towards MDG2 – for universal education, MDG4 – for child health and MDG5 – for maternal health. By creating employment in these remote locations and increasing household incomes, families are able to send their children to school and feed their children more nutritious food. By working to end poverty and hunger many other problems within these poor and remote locations can also be benefitted.

You can read more about the ten principles here: http://www.unglobalcompact.org/AboutTheGC/TheTenPrinciples/index.html

We encourage all companies to take part in the UN Global Compact so that we can all work together to end poverty in this world.

Samantha