Moner Bondhu is a mental healthcare and wellbeing platform in Bangladesh working since 2016 towards SDG 3.4 to provide accessible and affordable mental healthcare to all. With their experienced and certified psycho-social experts, advocates and mental health workers and 1500 volunteers and dynamic management team they have reached over 3 million people online and more than 1 hundred thousand people through events. Tawhida Shiropa is the founder and CEO of Moner Bondhu, She has 13 years of experience in this social sector. She is an Acumen fellow and US state department fellow ( IVLP fellow).
Moner Bondhu is dedicatedly working for mental health and psycho-social awareness in Bangladesh in six different areas:
- Providing care and support to persons with mental distress, via helpline number, online and offline counseling support.
- Organizing group sessions, workshops, and training using both online and traditional platforms.
- Developing toolkits, knowledge-products and training modules for individuals
- Hosting a weekly radio program
- Broadcasting a television show
- Advocating for the psychosocial services with narratives, animations, leaflets, stickers, videos, etc.
During COVID-19, Moner Bondhu provided free 24/7 video and tele counseling. From March to December they served over 18000 calls from 52 districts in Bangladesh and 10 different countries.
Recently they have created the first ever free online certification capacity building course in Bangla on psychosocial health and behavioural skills. This was done with the support of UNDP, under the COVID-19 Crisis Response Project where Moner Bondhu is the implementing partner. Moner Bondhu also partnered up with BGMEA and supported the RMG workers in 50 different factories.
They are now developing the first ever mental health mobile App in Bangladesh exclusively for COVID-19. They have also recently become the mental health partner of Facebook and Instagram in Bangladesh.