Universal Foundation is a nonprofit and nonpolitical organization dedicated to helping the poor and disadvantaged people to ensure a better life for them. Universal Foundation has a dream that one day all these helpless people suffering from poverty will establish themselves as prosperous communities. Universal foundation is working continuously with your generous support to achieve this goal. Bangladesh still has millions of people living with dismal poverty despite its progress. Wherever there are people with distress and difficulty, Universal Foundation is there to provide aid and assistance to them to alleviate their sufferings. Bangladesh still has millions of people living with dismal poverty despite its progress. Wherever there are people with distress and difficulty, Universal Foundation is there to provide aid and assistance to them to alleviate their sufferings. This Foundation was formed and registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860 in 12 August 2021. Universal Foundation (UF) (literally translated as In the journey towards enlightenment’) is a non-profit, government approved, charitable organization dedicated towards enlightening and improving the lives of the economically and socially deprived members of the community. At Universal Foundation (literally translated as ‘all in all’), we aim to provide basic education to child laborers and to create employment opportunities among the underprivileged and disadvantaged sections of the society. In particular, UF seeks to establish an egalitarian society which guarantees basic education, improved health and hygiene to underprivileged children and financial independence and empowerment to their families. The Foundation has been established with an objective to educate a generation of our poor children up to a certain level. Education is a masterkey for both personal and national development of a country. One of the Foundation’s core working principles is- “Make only one generation of our children educated up to a certain level, we will not have to be worried about any further generation cause an educated person will never leave his next generation uneducated.” Hope these will be helpful in your day-to-day professional world. You are welcome to give any kind of feedback on those publications. We shall be happy to get such feedback or recommendation.
Vision
To eradicate poverty through sustainable development and women empowerment.
We believe
A Universal Foundation perspective is required to address complex human development needs.
Sustainability comes from building the capacity of individuals, communities and countries to address their
needs.
The key to improving lives is in generating, sharing and applying knowledge.
Partnering with governments, civil society organizations, the private sector and communities leads to success.
Mission
UF strives to empower the disadvantaged communities through implementation of integrated programs that
include capacity building, infrastructure development, employment creation, nutrition awareness and support,
and above all inclusive and appropriate financing for planned economic activities. These interventions aim to
facilitate the communities to realize their full potentials, lift them out of poverty and take full advantage of
emerging opportunities.
Innovation to meet the evolving needs of our beneficiaries, funders and partners. Mutual respect for diversity and cultural differences. Passion driven by a personal commitment to make a positive difference. Accountability for our work, measuring, reporting and continually improving all that we do. Commitment to excellence assured by the highest ethical, quality, operational performance and scientific standards. Teamwork across disciplines and geographies, within the organization and with our partners. Unity and equity Use of local resources Belief and trust in community wisdom Transparency and accountability at all levels of program implementation Building self-reliant and sustainable institutions of the poor at community level
What we do
Institution building: Universal Foundation for establishing institutions for the project beneficiaries and aims to
support the networking and aggregation of the village-level community institutions created. There are to take
over the support and development function for their village institutions. The vision for these institutions is to
network the village institutions and support and monitor their performance while also seeking other potential
options for economic growth and service provisions for the village institutions or groups of beneficiaries. These
second-tier institutions are intended to take over most of the community support currently provided by UF. A
phase-out plan has already been prepared for all SIPP-II villages. At the end of an initial support period by UF to
these newly created societies of around two years, UF is expected to withdraw its support in these districts and only provide occasional guidance as may be required.
Youth Employment One of the core objectives of UF is to provide access to employment opportunities to the unemployed youths (18 – 35 years) and equip them with necessary technical trainings. Finding jobs in rural areas for the youngsters is challenging due to various reasons, among them (i) lack of opportunities to start businesses (ii) lack of information on potential employment opportunities (iii) social norms and constraints that make it either difficult for youths to leave their villages and seek employment elsewhere or lack of exposure and experience that makes youth reluctant to venture from their villages. In order to address those problems UF has developed partnerships with the service sector, telecommunications, technology, garments, and agribusiness sectors, and linked with key Gov training, vocational and job creation initiatives. UF has set-up a youth data base that is being maintained. SIPP-II has also supported the formation of youth groups. These groups meet once a week to discuss common problems and identify options to be useful and participate in the local community. Counseling is also provided for the youths and their parents that have the option to obtain a job away from home but may be reluctant to leave. The youth groups also serve as a platform to enroll youth in existing employment programs from the government or other partners. This activity has managed to support more than 12,000 youth and has been achieved with minimal costs under SIPP-II.
Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning MEL is an integral part of Universal Foundation’s internal control mechanism and is used as a management tool to track inputs, outputs, processes and constraints. This unit provides support to UF’s development programs, supporting departments. In order to ensure transparency, the unit conducts periodic analysis, enabling the management to determine whether the key activities are being carried out as planned, and whether they are having the expected outcomes. MEL System analyzes the strength, weakness, bottlenecks and outcomes of the overall processes of the project activities. The field level monitoring and learning elicits emerging operational issues and bottlenecks at the villages in participation of the community people and resolve the problems.
The village level project implementation progress is captured through MIS where Village Matrix (VM) is the key information source of the village. UF-MIS is producing key outputs like Project Beneficiaries Information, Key Milestones Monitoring Matrix, Village Matrix, Component-wise Progress Reports etc.
Nutrition Awareness and Support Universal Foundation aims to raise awareness, improve attitudes and practices to accelerate nutritional outcomes for targeted beneficiaries Increased household income does not necessarily translating into improved nutritional outcomes and therefore can only partially address the under and malnutrition challenges in Bangladesh. Activities proposed under NH (Livelihood) mprovement Project) would focus on awareness building, behavioral change for personal hygiene, food preparation, food choices and mainstreaming nutrition sensitive actions, particularly in selected income generating activities of beneficiaries. The target group for the nutrition related activities comprises largely a sub-set of project beneficiaries that are among the core focus group for nutrition interventions – pregnant and lactating mothers and young children. Behavioural change campaigns and awareness building would be facilitated by UF using the established community mechanism, while the activities would be outsourced to experienced players/NGOs in the intervention areas. The project would contract agencies to train community professionals in the project areas and support village nutrition groups that will be formed by project beneficiaries. Areas to be covered under the support would be: (i) improved kitchen gardens; (ii) nutrition practices; and (iii) hand-washing. Additional support would be sought from Government institutions such as clinics and line agencies for continuous community training on nutrition related issues and improved agricultural practices. It is also expected that the recently negotiated Bank project on Income Support for the Poorest would reach out to some of the target group on nutrition.
Livelihood Development UF is determined to increase livelihood opportunities of poor and hardcore poor by organizing them in producer groups, cooperatives or federations and improving their market and business orientation and forward and backward linkages in the market systems. Various models of joint actions of smallscale individual producers working as organized producer groups would aim to raise the attractiveness of poor and hardcore poor as market partners, reduce market transaction costs and align their production decisions with business and market opportunities. These producer organizations would also facilitate services provisions to their members and act as economic entities and business partners in the down- and up-stream value chains and create additional opportunities for added value to their products. Specific objectives would be to: (i) build and
strengthen producer organizations as market partners and commercially oriented entities; (ii) organize and align skill development and training in response to the specific labor market requirements; (iii) facilitate interaction between producers and traders/processors of products in the down- and up-stream value chains; and (iv) support market/business oriented investment to solve bottlenecks in the market chains and/or adding value to the products (e.g. poor and hardcore poor capturing a higher share in the value chain). Under this group of activities the UF would support: (a) a scanning and studying of priority value chains linked to livelihood investment priorities of the project beneficiaries; technical and business related bottlenecks would be identified and areas of further support would be defined (e.g. improved technologies, product quality requirements, market and business understanding, etc.); (b) annual stakeholder round table meetings at national and district levels, which would bring together project beneficiary producer groups and relevant interested business operators; these stakeholder meetings would provide an opportunity for producers and market operators to meet, exchange interests, and develop forward and backward linkages; and (c) various stakeholder thematic meetings and workshops as well as special subject meetings for an in-depth exchange of producer groups and business operators in priority value chains (e.g. different livestock products value chains, garment or handicrafts, etc.); these meetings will foster understanding market and technology requirements and proved and exchange forum for new and advanced technologies.
Appraisal and Monitoring : An independent appraisal and monitoring teams (AMTs) is the heart of UF’s quality assurance and fund disbursement mechanism who independently review community submissions for release of fund installment. Appraisal and monitoring teams not only appraise community readiness to receive funds but also check compliance issues with on the basis of COM (Community Operations Manual) guidelines. Communication: Universal Foundation’s overreaching vision of communication is flexible enough to accommodate diverse national and regional circumstances. UF exhibits success stories and achievements to strengthen government and Development partner’s perception and mobilize resources on a regular basis through various means like media campaigns, website updates, press releases, quarterly newsletters and annual reports. Apart from that UF has developed a detailed IEHC (Information, Education, Health and Communication) strategy in consultation with the national and international experts for making connections with the rural communities. UF is generating awareness through dissemination of information leading to adequate program literacy regarding entitlements and processes. Capacity building: Focusing on human resource development, UF is building capacities of staff and beneficiaries through training oriented comprehensive program. UF is very much aware of developing the knowledge, attitude and practice of its community members through capacity building on the basis of proper management of financial records as well as selecting and implementing IGAs on the basis of COM guidelines. As a consequence, the community people have become able to manage their groups, select borrowers, manage savings, and select viable IGA.
Information and Communication Technology Universal Foundation is planning to pilot the proposed ICT application under SIPP- II and then carry it over to NL. Total 30 villages from Dinajpur, Thakurgoan and Lalmonirhat districts have been identified for the test run. Each community will be provided with one laptop and 3G internet connection facility. UF in collaboration with Data Soft Company has developed an additional module for recording the financial transactions of the village credit organizations. This module does not have facilities to track all of the village expenses and as such it needs some modifications. UF conducted training on this software to relevant staff at cluster, district, region and headquarter level. Thirty beneficiaries at community level for basic computer operation and Bangla software training have been identified; of which majority of them are youth member of rural samiti and have completed higher secondary school certificate.
