Promote people’s participation in governance, democratic decentralization, accountability of public services, economic governance, human rights, access to justice, and absolute tolerance of diverse opinions in politics.

One of the focuses of our development initiatives is promoting good governance, rights, and justice. WAVE is working towards strengthening the local government system and empowering the people through democratic decentralization, strengthening local government, improving the local justice system, and responsive public services. The program emphasize the promotion of good governance through the inclusion of people’s participation, especially in the decision-making process. This ensures that citizens’ voices are represented in local government institutions and these institutions are sensitive, transparent, and free from corruption. Furthermore, the focus is given to training and empowering marginalized groups of society who are victims of discrimination or deprived of justice in social security-oriented services. Consequently, they can play a role in establishing the rule of law and ensuring more access to these services. When providing policy advice and developing campaign strategies, we take into account the public’s desire to review current legal frameworks, reform them, and enact new legislation. At the same time, we place equal value on trustworthy public institutions and effective local government structures for the right to food and nutrition, health, education, agriculture services, social protection, women’s rights, and gender equality. To make the local government system and its various services more accessible to the general public, several public engagement programs and campaigns have been launched. This includes mobilizing public and stakeholder views in issue-based policy advocacy and campaigns. The Right to Food and Nutrition Campaign is one of our major initiatives in Bangladesh about the transformation of the food and agricultural systems, consistent and open policy frameworks, and laws aiming at fair, inclusive, and gender-sensitive good governance frameworks. Additionally, the prevention of the COVID-19 pandemic, the strengthening of demand-driven health services, a progressive tax system to promote citizen participation, and the empowerment of underprivileged minority communities for effective participation in the development process are important initiatives.

The campaign aims to mobilize opinion of mass people and concerned stakeholders in support of a national decentralization policy and influence the state to endorse the policy. WAVE organized ‘Democratic Decentralization National Convention’ in 2010 demanding the execution of democratic decentralization in light of our constitution and proposed a draft Democratic Decentralization Policy. As continual effort, WAVE carries out multifaceted activities through its network to review and finalize the proposed Decentralization Policy. Under the campaign, organization coordinates network and alliance, involve LG representatives, policy makers, political leaders, civil society members, media personnel, youth and other stakeholders and conduct continuous lobbying with concerned Parliamentary Standing Committee and policy makers.

The initiative is undertaken to provide capacity building, legal and technical assistance to CSOs for creating enabling environment and promote minority women and girls’ roles as agents of development and change to strengthen policy dialogue on gender equality and women’s rights. This Action has taken continuous efforts to improve the capabilities and sustainability of the CSOs to organize themselves to respond to existing political, social and economic challenges of minority groups, through advocacy and lobbying for inclusive governance with the involvement of Advocacy Network (Loak Morcha). The project is supported by European Union with the technical assistance of Christian Aid. Besides WAVE, the implementing partners are Nagorik Uddyog, BLAST and BANDHU. This project is being implemented in Rajshahi and Naogaon districts of Rajshahi division, Khulna, Jashore and Satkhira districts of Khulna division, Sylhet, Moulvibazar and Hobigonj districts of Sylhet division, and Dhaka city.

WAVE Foundation is currently implementing a project titled Women in Leadership (WiL) in collaboration with the British Council Bangladesh from November 2023 to March 2024. With the objectives of creating opportunities for dialogue to influence policies that benefit women and girls; to promote access and opportunity for women and girls and to build their skills and confidence to achieve their rights, and potential and have more influence over decisions that affect their lives. WAVE Foundation also aims to enhance its role in promoting gender equality, and its overall contribution to the Sustainable Development Goal (no. 5): Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. The project’s core offer is to emerging women leaders a lifetime opportunity to develop their leadership capacity and skills through an eight-week online, self-access leadership course. The eight-week self-accessed online course is comprised of Live Classrooms, Speed Mentoring Sessions, and Webinars. Two separate cohorts (group) comprising female govt. officials (BCS Female Cadre) and other female professionals from British Council alumni are the key participants of the course. The course is structured over eight weeks, each week focusing on a core component of social leadership. Sectoral experts play the key role of facilitator, mentor, and speaker respectively in different sessions. Project participants celebrate International Women’s Day through social media and a daylong networking event will take place in Dhaka at the end of the project period. Through this networking event, women leaders will engage with policymakers and civil society members on crucial thematic issues. It is expected that the project will develop participant’s ability to become more effective in leading interventions to support gender equality and women’s leadership within their sector and/or community.

WAVE Foundation recently started a new project named ‘Support for Enhancing Accountability in Water and Sanitation Sector to address risks of WASH’. This is supported by the Water Integrity Network (WIN).  Field-level interventions are being implemented in Khulna and Rajshahi City Corporation and policy advocacy also will be conducted at the National level.  The main objectives of the project are to push for reform through policy and advocacy; strengthen civil society; address integrity in the climate crisis and give a voice to the marginalized. According to SDG goal 6 is set to ensure the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all by 2030. To achieve those objectives, the project activities focus on conducting studies, workshops & Training with local integrity champions, Awareness Sessions with WASH user groups, youth, CSOs, and CBOS will raise collective voices to demand a more accountable and participatory water and sanitation sector in achieving SDG 6; Citizens’ Score Cards; Budget Monitoring; Public Hearing Advocacy Meetings with City Corporation on WASH integrity; Sharing Meeting and Roundtable with relevant stakeholders at national level; Discuss and Dialogue between Policy Actors & Service Providing Institutions for policy reforms and budget allocation

WAVE Foundation has been implementing a project titled Improving Transparency and Accountability of Social Protection Programs (SPPs) in collaboration with the Asia Foundation Bangladesh from January to August 2024. The project aims to address the objectives to Increase public sector accountability and transparency; Strengthen the rule of law Promote civil society participation and media in these efforts; and Strengthen democratic institutions and practices by applying the strategic approaches of Strengthening civic engagement and space for improving transparency and accountability of SPPs; Enabling community for raising voice to ensure transparency and accountability of SPPs services and also aware on universal pension scheme; Ensuring responsive delivery of SPPs services using social accountability tools and lobby & advocacy for ensuring responsive delivery of SPPs services and Reinforcing relationship with the relevant stakeholders in better-performing oversight roles and responsibilities and demand-driven policy procedures of SPPs including universal pension scheme. Capacity building of Civic Forum on improving transparency and accountability of SPPs; Community-level awareness; Social audits; Public Hearings; Lobby and advocacy meetings and Evidence-based policy advocacy will be conducted to achieve the desired level of the outcome of the project.

The Asia Foundation has provided a grant to People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL) in Sri Lanka under its South Asia Grants Program (SAGP). This grant aims to establish a regional coalition/network in collaboration with two other regional SAGP partners, namely: the Democracy Resource Center Nepal (DRCN) and WAVE Foundation in Bangladesh. As part of this, WAVE Foundation is starting to implement a project titled Building a Regional Network on Gender Inclusion in Political Participation. The goal of the project is to improve the political participation of women in the region and enhance the active participation of women in civic democratic decision-making processes. This initiative will focus on creating opportunities for regional peer learning and sharing platforms to enable women political representatives to connect and benefit from shared resources and learning; replicate enabling practices across the region; and function as a regional advocacy platform. This regional coalition/network will work on country-specific objectives, thereby giving more emphasis to the respective contexts, and will also focus on how these country-specific objectives could contribute to the overall/regional objective. To achieve the aforementioned objective, the partners in the three countries will undertake a list of activities. Research on Gender & Women’s Political Empowerment; Sharing Meetings; Workshops; Training, producing research Reports and events, and finally facilitating the official launch of the regional gender network.

The major objective of Right to Food & Nutrition Campaign is to share experiences of civil societies’ movements and strengthening contact with all concerned organizations, institutions, partners & networks and ensure right to food and nutritional security for all the people of the country. It aims to promote investment in agriculture and food systems by accelerating coherent and transparent policies, laws and regulations based on equitable, inclusive, and gender sensitive governance structures in the context of Bangladesh. Right to Food Bangladesh Network is conducting this Campaign and undertaking multifaceted activities to accelerate the ‘Legal Framework on Right to Food’ and other relevant issues by engaging different entities with its perspectives and strategies while WAVE Foundation has been playing the coordinating role.

The overall objective of the Project is to increase access to justice for people in rural areas of Bangladesh, especially women, ethnic minorities and disadvantaged groups. The project aims to build capacities of local justice actors to meet the justice needs of the population and offer appropriate legal services in the form of well-functioning village courts are improved. Also it is working for the people living in rural areas, especially women, the poor and other disadvantaged groups are empowered to access Village Courts to resolve minor disputes. The direct beneficiary of the project are the justice complainants, Union Parishad representatives, Assistant Account cum Computer Operator (AACO), UP secretary and village police. As a partner Organization, WAVE Foundation is implementing this project in 154 Upazila, 1495 Ups, and 25 District under Barishal, Khulan and Dhaka Division. The project is implemented under Local Government Division with the financial and technical assistance of European Union, UNDP Bangladesh and GOB. This phase’s duration is from August 2023 to 30 June 2027 with a total budget of BDT 368, 751,535.