Background
Love Thy Neighbour (LTN) is a women headed, women led and women focused, non-profit and non-Government organization (NGO). Love Thy Neighbour (LTN) has been working in Barisal since 1995 which was initiated by a group of local enthusiastic social workers with a view to uplift the social and economic conditions of distressed coastal community people especially women and children of coastal area of Barisal in Bangladesh. Love Thy Neighbour (LTN) is registered by NGO Affairs Bureau, under foreign donation act, Prime Minister Office, Government of Bangladesh, Registration No. 1627. LTN has been working with Education Health and Family Planning, Pre-Primary Education, Rights and Social Justice, Gender and Development, Water and Sanitation, IGA Training Program, Rights of persons with disability and Development program, IGA Training Program and Environment and disaster management program Empowerment of adolescents program by the support of Government of Bangladesh, national and International donor agency. LTN’s basic objective is to uplift the socio-economic conditions of the disadvantaged women and children. LTN believes that to improve the living condition of the disadvantaged women and adolescents and promote self- reliance is the key to meet the long-term needs of the beneficiaries struggling to overcome poverty and social insecurity. LTN also started working with the youth to create options of livelihood for them within the project areas in line with Education Prevention, Livelihood and protection. LTN is working to change in policies and practices affecting children’s and young people’s rights.
Love Thy Neighbour (LTN) is formed in Barisal district, one of the costal and disaster prone 2,784.52 square kilometers southern part of Bangladesh. It is heartening to mention that Barisal is one of the extremist disaster prone areas of Bangladesh. Flood is often common during the monsoon. Most miseries in the life of the people is river erosion and this rendered a large number of people homeless, land-less, assets-less and also in loss of valuable belongings. River erosion is one of the serious causes of poverty in this disaster prone district.
There is widespread unemployment scenario in the absence of mills and factories at Barisal. Women’s dependence of men in many aspects of living and livelihood brings scope of male domination on women and this subdues the women’s voice. Striking social problems in and around are dowry, polygamy, separation with husband, abandoned wife, early marriage during childhood, divorce, physical and mental torture on the wives render the life of women and children miserable.
The main function of the LTN is to undertake an extensive and intensive participatory sustainable development process through empowerment of the underprivileged by supplementing and complementing the government development initiatives in the project areas of LTN. Over the period, the founder members of the organization have had the opportunity to participate in many development programs and initiated a good number of development activities to improve the socio-economic conditions of the poor and marginalized people. The founder members keenly observed the living conditions of the poor and underprivileged people, their hardship and sufferings for merely survival and over all their shortcomings and ignorance in improving their lot in the society. All these had inspired the founder members to initiate some development interventions involving like-minded social development activists and the LTN is an outcome of these initiatives and effort.