Our Projects

Niketan has been working in Bangladesh with children and youngsters with intellectual and complex disabilities since 1998.

Niketan offers these children care on a cognitive, social, emotional and medical level. We offer a care package to children spanning from birth to young adult. This care package consists of: early intervention, special education, physiotherapy, vocational training, providing study/work places and community care. In addition, we offer practical support at home, healthy meals, travel expenses and professional support. In 2019 we reached out to 574 children.

The projects are operated by the Bangladeshi NGO DRRA and are all supervised and supported with expert knowledge by Niketan.

Project area

The Manikganj District is one of the poorer districts in Bangladesh.  Manikganj area lies very low and gets flooded twice a year. The inhabitants are used to the floods, so unless the flooding is extreme it does not create a lot of problems. Manikganj consists of  7 upazila / thana (subdistricts), 65 unions, 1643 villages and 1 municipality. Most of the projects of Niketan are within the upazilas Shivalaya, Ghior and Daulatpur.

One of Niketan’s projects takes place in the Badda slum, which is located in the capital Dhaka. The slum is situated between two diplomatic residential areas: Gulshan and Banani. The inhabitants of the slum are excluded from fundamental needs like clean drinking water, healthy food and proper housing. They live with hunger, malnourishment and various diseases like malaria and tuberculosis. Children do not attend school, but instead end up in terrible sweatshops in which they are heavily exploited. The slums are breeding grounds for social problems, crime and addiction.

The map shows the villages where the children live. The colors indicate the children who visit the various centers. Red = Baniajuri, Green = Ghior, Yellow = community care Daulatpur, Pink = community care Ghior, purple = Dhaka