Under the Voluntary Social Welfare Agency (Registration and Control) Ordinance (1961) of the Ministry of Social Welfare of Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh and the City Corporation Ordinance (1983), Eminence Associates for Social Development (EASD) emerged as a not-for-profit organization to reach out the health, nutrition, food security, climate change and human rights realm of Bangladesh alongside contributing its potential to invigorate the existing development system.


EMINENCE AT A GLANCE

Since its inception in 2003, taking legal support from City Corporation, Eminence started its venture as a non-profit organization with a vision of creating a society where the people live in equity and health justice by their maximum potential. Ministry of Social Welfare issued license to Eminence in 2008. Eminence has emphasized working in the areas of Research, Programme, Advocacy and Capacity Building all over Bangladesh. Since the very beginning of its journey, Eminence has worked with high level government and nongovernmental agencies in the field of health, nutrition and development having support from a number of reputed professors, academics, researchers, and journalists. Eminence is managed by an 11 member Executive Committee (EC), 36 permanent full-time staff as well as recruits part time researchers/consultants on contract to carry out the research/studies.

Eminence has proved to be very proficient in conducting national and local level advocacy for policy formulating and implementation. It has created a huge and strong network among government and local NGOs to raise voice for issues related to health, nutrition, water-sanitation etc. As part of its advocacy activities, Eminence has recently developed Breastfeeding, Infant and Young Children Feeding Forum (BIPF) and Non-Communicable Diseases Forum (NCDF). The former was established two years ago and is conducting different seminars, workshops related to promotion, protection and support of breastfeeding and complementary feeding. The BIPF accommodates about 112 organizations both at national and local level to generate collaborative action that will ensure human health rights for healthy feeding. Likewise NCDF is a common platform for all national professionals, associations, donor agencies and UN organizations to help prevent non-communicable diseases in Bangladesh. It is worth mentioning that government of Bangladesh shares active partnership of both the forums.   However, as a project, Eminence recently implemented, Get on Track to Save Children’s Live, and Poverty and Working Children Rights-national Advocacy  programmes for Save the Children UK  with an aim to create a broader ‘policy level awareness’ for achieving the target of MDG-4. The projects included “National Press Conference”, “Round Table Discussion” etc. Extensive mass communication activities were also implemented by using various communication materials (posters, banners, festoons and stickers) all over the country as a part of this project. A Human Rally was also arranged in Six Divisional cities of the country under this project including 500 participants from each division. A signing programme was organised with participants from all levels of the community especially poor, civil society members, local media personnel, government officials and local political leaders to observe breastfeeding week 2009. Eminence also have experience of conducting National Media Advocacy to influence the government and policy makers by increasing skill among journalists regarding primary health care in Bangladesh.

Eminence is also a potential partner of World Health Organization (WHO), Save the Children USA, Plan Bangladesh, Micronutrient Initiative (MI), Concern World Wide, CARE, Concern Universal for different advocacy activities. As an evidence based organization, Eminence in partnership with aforementioned organizations, conduct research and evaluation studies for their programmes. Till date, it has conducted 32 research for different programmes of these organizations.

Moreover, Eminence has been implementing programmes on Nutrition, Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD) and Early Childhood Development (ECD) among urban people in Mirpur of Dhaka City.