Bangladesh — like all South Asia — suffers from “son stroke” — the preference for boys over girls. This has been shown to be one of the strongest underlying causes of Bangladesh’s high rates of malnutrition. Bangladesh also suffers from one of the highest rates of child marriage — cutting short the opportunities of millions of girls to stay in school and realize their full potential.

Nobody “wants” to discriminate against girls, and consultations with gender experts in Bangladesh concluded that campaigning to awaken the nation to the costs of this discrimination is likely the highest leverage pathway to the profound transformation in gender relations needed to end hunger and poverty.

In 2000, The Hunger Project secured government support for a National Girl Child Day and catalyzed the creation of a National Girl Child Advocacy Forum (girlchildforum.org) to not only implement annual Girl Child Day celebrations throughout the nation, but create strategies for achieving progress throughout the year.

Legal Structure

The National Girl Child Advocacy Forum (NGCAF) is an independently registered society with a democratic structure. The Hunger Project serves as its secretariat. Local units are formed at the Union and Upazila level, and are federated upwards to the District and National levels.

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