Caritas a national level non-profit development organisation established by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Bangladesh to conduct activities of integrated social welfare and development. Caritas was founded in 1967 as the eastern branch of Caritas Pakistan. Following the devastating cyclone of November 1970, it was reorganised and became known as CORR (Christian Organisation for Relief and Rehabilitation). Many emergency relief measures and rehabilitation projects were implemented by CORR at that time in noakhali, barisal and patuakhali. CORR took on the character of a national organisation on 13 January 1971. During the war of liberation of 1971, the needs for relief and rehabilitation were felt countrywide, and by the end of the war, CORR had implemented 55 different projects. Later, it took up an ambitious reconstruction programme for war victims. CORR was renamed Caritas in 1976.

One of the major projects of Caritas after 1976 was the Development Extension Education Services (DEEDS) for promoting non-formal education. Three other projects, the Integrated Women Development Programme (IWDP), Integrated Human Development Project (IHDP), and Integrated Community Development Project (ICDP) were started later for different beneficiary groups. All these projects together form the core of Caritas development activities

Caritas works with all people, irrespective of race, caste or creed. However, it focuses on the poor, the marginal groups, and the landless. Its head office is at dhaka. It has seven regional offices in Barisal, chittagong, Dhaka, dinajpur, khulna, mymensingh and rajshahi. At present, it operates in 72 upazilas, where, through its various programmes, it plays a complementary and supplementary role to government activities towards socio-economic development of Bangladesh. Caritas projects are especially targeted against endemic rural poverty, rural unemployment, malnutrition, population problems, illiteracy and the like. A major area of Caritas activities is its involvement in emergency and disaster preparedness, under which Caritas has built cyclone rehabilitation centres, reconstructed war-affected villages, implemented relief and rehabilitation programmes for locations and people affected by floods, cyclones, droughts and famines.

The Development Extension Education Services of Caritas began in 1979 in 24 upazilas. The objective of the programme was the empowerment of rural landless and marginal families (partner group) through non-formal education. Till June 2000, a total of 12,749 groups (male 4,708 and female 8,041) have been organised with 242,955 members (male 83,687 and female 159,268) in 51 upazilas. The Integrated Women Development Programme (IWDP) of Caritas aimed at empowering womenfolk through formal and non-formal education with a view to help them develop with human dignity. So far 2,207 groups with 39,299 members have been formed. The Integrated Human Development Project (IHDP) of Caritas aims at promoting socio-economic development and bring about attitudinal change of the poor and marginalised tribal community of the barind tract areas through imparting literacy and numeracy, and organising training on various professional skills. The Integrated Community Development Projects (ICDP) of Caritas aims to motivate and organise ethnic communities of greater Mymensingh, Dinajpur, Dhaka, sylhet and Chittagong areas for socio-economic development by way of human development through training, income generation activities, and health education. Other programmes of Caritas are infrastructure development (rural works) programmes, formation of credit unions, underprivileged children preparatory education programmes, formation of children in orphanages, formal education programme (FEP), training, evaluation, resources and counselling (TERC), rehabilitation of drug addicts, and literacy and health care programmes.

Caritas made a significant contribution by introducing mini-irrigation in Bangladesh by using 'rower' and 'tara' hand tubewells and 3´´ low-lift pumps as well as in social forestry, employment creation through sericulture, fisheries development, and sustainable environment management.

Caritas operates through a general body and an executive board. The general body consists of 28 members drawn from the cross-section of people and it makes policies, approves annual budgets and audit reports, appoints auditors, and elects the executive board. The executive board has l2 members and it approves and reviews the activities of Caritas including project performances. The executive body is headed by an executive director assisted by executive officers (directors) in charge of development, disaster management and administration. Each regional office is headed by a regional director assisted by 5 officers (women development officer, education officer, welfare officer, development officer and the senior accountant). At the upazila level, there is a field officer in charge of all projects and he is assisted by full-time assistant field officers and part time union level workers.

Caritas programmes are operated mainly through the donation (project aid) received from the partner agencies abroad. Some local contribution is also collected. In 1999-2000, it received foreign donation of Tk 358.248 million and the local contribution collected was Tk 44.826 million. The expenditure budget for the same year was Tk 525.227 million. [Shamsul Huda]