The British Asian Trust, founded by Britain’s Prince Charles, is marking Ramadan this year by launching a special appeal to create awareness about mental health challenges in Bangladesh.
Supported by a range of celebrity ambassadors from the UK and South Asia, the “Change Minds” appeal for Bangladesh is aimed at the thousands of Rohingya refugees who have fled to Bangladesh to escape from violence in Myanmar.
The British Asian Trust project will directly reach 15,000 refugee women and children by creating and strengthening 220 safe places within the refugee camps for children, women and girls, delivering life-skills training and psychosocial support to 4,500 women and adolescent girls.
Partnering with BRAC, an international development organisation based in Bangladesh, the Trust will provide 800 women and children with psychosocial and trauma counselling and raise awareness within the refugee community about the risks of exploitation and trafficking.
It will also help strengthen law enforcement efforts to protect the vulnerable.
British Asian Trust CEO Richard Hawkes said: “The urgent need of the Rohingya people is the most pressing crisis in South Asia right now. The impact of repeated exposure to trauma cannot be underestimated. Without intervention, thousands of women and children are at risk of further abuse, which could profoundly impact their mental health, well-being and even lives, well beyond this crisis.
“The British Asian Trust, with the help of our supporters, will ensure the women and children we work with are safe from further trauma, have the support to recover from their experiences and the resilience to make a new life for themselves in the future.”
The United Nations has described the Rohingya mass exodus as the world’s fastest-growing refugee crisis. Many of these refugees travelled for weeks to get to Bangladesh and are now living in makeshift camps in Cox’s Bazar in the south-east of the country. Even before the refugee crisis, this was one of Bangladesh’s poorest districts, with malnutrition, health, and food insecurity already at desperate levels.
With its latest appeal, the British Asian Trust hopes to make a significant impact in a region where more than million Rohingya people are living as refugees.
Hawkes added: “Mental health is a desperately under-reported and under-resourced crisis in South Asia.
“At the British Asian Trust, we will develop mental health programmes within poor and deprived communities. We will raise awareness about mental health issues as it is a taboo subject in society.”