Care across Communities (CAC) is proud to celebrate the Small Charity Week, UK (June 20-24, 2022). Small charities make a significant contribution to bringing positive changes across the world, and CAC embraces this value of taking small yet firm steps to bring sustainable changes. This week, we celebrate as well as reflect on our journey and learn from others, so that we work collaboratively and collectively. A charity that started its journey during the unprecedented Covid-19 year of 2021, as a team we reflect on our key strategies underpinning what we do:
First, CAC maintains an adaptable and flexible attitude from its get-go. As a small charity run by an excellent body of international volunteers, in our first year (2021-2022), we piloted a number of small-scale events, mainly sponsored by fundraising, at grassroots levels for people in need by providing emergency food support and hygiene products in Bangladesh and Uganda. The knowledge and experience that we gathered from these small events helped us build our confidence for our future work. From 2022, our approach is to work with minority communities in Bangladesh, to start with, to make durable and sustainable changes. For this, we have prioritised three particular interrelated areas, i) improving water and sanitation conditions, ii) supporting poor and under-served women to be financially resilient, and iii) facilitating education provision in the poorest communities where drop-out rates are the highest. CAC mainly works in these areas through particular intervention projects, funding is secured through competitive grant submission.
Secondly, CAC maintains a horizontal and circular approach to building sustainable human connections. We work directly with the grassroots communities in Bangladesh, and we take the full benefit of the massive expansion of digitisation of countries like Bangladesh in recent years. From organising events with our volunteers, buying equipment and materials for our services, to reaching our service-users, CAC is always present, albeit mostly virtually, whenever we are needed. In other words, even if we are small and we work from the UK, we are not an unknown slate or donor from the top, we work with everyone because we firmly believe that a sustainable relationship is at the heart of sustainable change.
Thirdly, and related to the above point, CAC is committed to accurate and equitable monitoring of its work, not for a purpose of policing, but to be reflective. We are deeply committed to our funders and we make sure that every penny is accounted for. At the same time, we learn from each of our processes, so that we can be proactive rather than reactive in our work. As part of our learning and creating impact, we regularly support our volunteers in doing research and in evaluating impact so that our volunteers are empowered to capture what works and what doesn’t work. We are, in one word, a charity committed to creating impact through accountability and integrity.
Once again, from the family of CAC, we take immense pride in being part of a big family of small charities committed to bringing the best out of local communities.
Dr. Rifat Mahbub
Chair, Board of Trustees
Care Across Communities
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