LIFE Bangladesh begins its journey with Project Mo

LIFE Bangladesh is an up-and-rising humanitarian organisation that began its operations back in January 2021, intending to create long-term sustainable development projects.

The journey of LIFE Bangladesh was in the planning of Mehrab Sakib Zaman, founder of LIFE Bangladesh, since 2015. "Starting an NGO that is going to have an actual impact and help in the economic development of Bangladesh has been a dream since I was 13," says Mehrab.

"I started in 2015 but I could not find a proper team. I tried and I failed several times. I finally got a team who are my co-founders. The 7 of us started together with a few ventures and one of the major ones among them is LIFE Bangladesh."

"We are bootstrapping all of our ventures including LIFE Bangladesh. I am lucky to have found the other 6 co-founders and honestly, I know all of them for more than a decade. The biggest challenge is to take the first step and we have done it. Bangladesh is going to be ready for more from team 7. We have many more surprises ahead.," says Mehrab.

Now, the first physical campaign, Project Mo was held on March 4, 2022. Project Mo is made up of dynamics related to menstrual hygiene, awareness, and solutions. To break the stigma around menstruation, LIFE launched the campaign's phase 1 on March 4. The first phase was about distributing pads to men–starting from the working-class urban men who are societally expected to avoid this topic.

Approximately 26 members from LIFE Bangladesh gathered to participate in the campaign. A total of 250 pads were distributed throughout the day in Gulshan 1, Gulshan 2 Circle, Kakoli Road, and Banani 11 to the Banani Supermarket. The teams talked to people about mensuration, informed them about the topic, informed them about the harm their negligence is causing and lastly, handed them a sanitary pad, a rose and a candy.

"Initial expectations were that we might receive a lot of backlashes and we might not be able to self-fund a proper campaign because there are many more parts that are yet to be live. But somehow, we pulled it off. Initially, we were also struggling, because Project Mo is only part of phase 1. Under phase 1 we also want to educate men from the root level, on feminine hygiene, menstruation, and period. Then we move on to phase 2 which is going to be very hard but we are not giving up. We started and we are going to go all the way," said a happy and excited Mehrab.