Friendship, a social purpose organisation, on Friday celebrated 20 years of its founding with the aim to bring opportunity, dignity and hope to remote and unaddressed communities at the forefront of the climate crisis.

Marking the anniversary, the organisation held a press conference at the Intercontinental Hotel in the capital on Friday.

Runa Khan, founder of the organisation, said “In these times of global crisis, Friendship’s mission and values are as relevant and important as ever”.

Read more: Friendship NGO: Small interventions add up to big role

“Today I believe, because of its impact, this work has to be scaled up and replicated with quality and dependability,” she said.

The organisation began its journey with an innovation: a floating hospital in the shifting river islands (chars) of the Brahmaputra/Jamuna River where conventional healthcare systems were impossible to operate.

Due to the temporal nature of the landscape, the social organisation was forced to innovate from the outset. That spirit of innovation resulted in its three-tier healthcare system that reaches the doorsteps of hard-to-reach communities, its nature-based and locally-led climate adaptation techniques, community managed mangrove plantations, and dismantlable, IT-enabled schools taking education where it was once impossible.

Friendship started in 2002 guided by its vision of a world where people—especially the hard-to-reach and unaddressed—have equal opportunities to live with dignity and hope.

Marc Elvinger, co-chair of Friendship International, Salahuddin Ahmed, chair of the board of directors of Friendship Bangladesh, Friendship national and international chairs, board members and other senior members of the organisation attended the events.

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Following the press conference, Friendship’s Char Theatre performed an adaptation from its repertoire of plays that address social issues like child marriage, dowry and basic rights in char communities.