Year of Establishment
Khulna Mukti Seba Sangstha (KMSS) is a Bangladeshi non-governmental organization (NGO) which aims to help people in remote and unaddressed communities to reach their full potential. The Organization has been established in 01 December 1997, in the name of Khulna Mukti Seba Sangstha (KMSS). As a Social Development Organization, started its journey with the goal to build a healthy society where all people are able to meet the basic human needs with full of joy and peace.
Background
A few social activists committed themselves to work among the drug addicts both from the social and medical perspectives. Finally, their dream gave birth to a new baby with a specific mission in December 1, 1997 in the name of Khulna Mukti Seba Sangstha (KMSS). Initially KMSS aimed to serve drug addict community. Considering the social analysis, it came to realization that, reducing poverty, promoting rights, women empowerment, basic education, good governance and environmental issues are greater milieus which need to be addressed apart from well being of drug dependents. Therefore, KMSS expanded its mandate to ultra poor women and their family members, high-risk behavior peoples in regards to HIV/AIDS & TB, transport workers, women workers, slum dwellers and hard to reach poor people. Now KMSS's constituency touches near about 1.5 million people.
Commitment
In order to achieve the goal, KMSS remained committed to serve the oppressed, the poor and the vulnerable communities by promoting full human transformation and bring positive changes in their lives leading to a holistic sustainable development. KMSS also relentlessly responded to the needs of the potential target communities, in case of natural and/or human made emergencies by supporting physically, mentally and environmentally. KMSS always focused on enhancing moral and spiritual values that assist the community to lead a peaceful life with dignity, respect, hope and humility.
Activities
KMSS has been working for nearly 2 decades to address the needs of the remote and marginalized communities of Bangladesh. Over that period, KMSS has grown from being a distant dream to become an organization delivering integrated services in sector like Health, Basic and Non-Formal Education, Rights, Good Governance, Livelihood, Disaster Management and Women Empowerment with population coverage of about 1.5 million.
KMSS has been working beyond continuing to respond to the immediate needs of marginalized communities, planning to demonstrate needs-based integrated multi-sector approach as an effective means of enabling remote communities to gain strength and stand on their own feet. As a result, KMSS scaled up operations to the extent necessary to demonstrate the credibility- not simply to achieve growth for growth’s sake. The model(s) can be further replicated and applied on a much larger scale by governments and other NGOs to achieve more widespread impact. To help achieve this, KMSS continues and extend communications and cooperation with the government at all levels be it local, regional or national. Other approaches and strategies include Working in Partnership, Promoting Empowerment, Providing Essential Services, Facilitating Enable Environment and Advocacy.
KMSS, ensures that the full range of services required for integrated development is made available, either by KMSS itself or through linkages with government or other NGO service providers & constantly improve the level of quality of services & advocate and promote the integration of working patterns and service delivery models, or relevant elements thereof, into the national public service delivery system of Bangladesh, particularly in Health, Women Empowerment and Education & communicate nationally and internationally about the effectiveness and sustainability of a needs-based, integrated development model in order to promote its adoption by the wider community of public and private development actors.
KMSS recognized that in the hard to reach and remote areas of Bangladesh, providing quality health services is challenging and hectic. To implement a comprehensive healthcare system in marginalized communities of hard-to-reach areas and maintain strong interaction with government and other partners to take forward the national healthcare agenda, KMSS started working in close collaboration with the local communities which it serves in order to identify their needs. The needs-based approach aims to promote ownership by the local communities and thus local communities have ownership of the decisions made about the services to be provided.
With the objective to reduce preventable mortality and morbidity especially among poor, women and children and to ensure good quality preventive and curative health services and to conduct operationally feasible research that will help decision makers in choosing a more effective way serving the service recipients, KMSS has been implementing a unique example of public-private partnership program, Urban Primary Health Care Service Delivery program to provide reproductive and other primary health care services targeting the poor peoples in Khulna, Rangpur and Dhaka City Corporation. The clinic network includes 05 units of Comprehensive Reproductive Health Care Centre, 21 units of Primary Health Care Centre. The network is supported by 4 units of Voluntary Counseling and Testing Centers as well as two centers for addressing TB diagnosis & treatment.
The 5 units of Comprehensive Reproductive Health Care Centre, equipped with full time delivery facilities inclusive of normal vaginal delivery and Caesarian Sections, provide services 24 hours a day and 7 days a week addressing poor and vulnerable population. The centers provide affordable quality services with a total of 30% of the clients to be provided with free service that are identified through a poverty gradation survey and being monitored effectively. The other services include Antenatal and Postnatal Care, Family Planning Services, Child Health services, EPI, Adolescent Reproductive Health, Reproductive Health, Maternal Health, Essential Services Packages, counseling, and referrals.
The KMSS has experience of successfully operating 21 units of the Primary Health Care Centers as a working hub for the CHRCC and played an instrumental role in serving the poor and vulnerable patients/clients in providing services like Antenatal and Postnatal Care, Family Planning Services, Child Health services, EPI, Adolescent Reproductive Health, Reproductive Health, Maternal Health, Essential Services Packages, counseling, and referrals.
The KMSS has gained substantial understanding and strengths in managing clinics and providing services to the vulnerable communities both in the urban, peri-urban, and rural remotes areas through its 20 years of working experiences. In the process of implementation of the projects/programs, KMSS continually focuses on strategic planning process. The initial plan was built upon and refreshed to cover the period the consecutive years taking into consideration the challenges, external circumstances, experience gained, and achievements gathered. It supports KMSS plan to identify specific goals and how to achieve them& thus build and develop the platform and infrastructure necessary to ensure that services continued to be delivered successfully in the long term. It also supports to secure well in advance the financial and other resources required to support and deliver planned activities and respond to the questions of partners, sponsors, and donors. KMSS believes in seeing and believing of tangible progress that has been achieved in further strengthening organization and improving management processes. To note that other support services are also developed and placed to stimulate the overall program management. As KMSS grows, however, the organization constantly reminds the team that KMSS’s mission is not to build a bigger organization, but to strengthen the communities in which we work and help our beneficiaries gain control over their lives.
To further the impact of the interventions, KMSS also worked, with its own initiative, with the poor and marginalized population particularly for women empowerment, disaster management, an Income Generation Activities and a Drug Treatment and Rehabilitation Center in Khulna City Corporation in December 1999 by its own fund. KMSS was pioneer in operating a first licensed Drug Treatment Center in the Southern. In 2004, KMSS started 30 beds free of cost Drug Treatment and Rehabilitation Center with the financial and technical assistance of USAID and FHI. In addition to health projects, KMSS gained experience Empowerment and Rights, Protect Violence against Women, Access to Justice, Providing Legal Aid, Water, Sanitation and Arsenic, Disaster Management, Democracy and Governance and Income Generation Activities etc. Currently KMSS has been operating 20 projects in 04 Divisions, Khulna, Dhaka, Barisal and Rangpur and 13 Districts. Near about 1000 energetic and dedicated employees are engaged in KMSS family. KMSS Annual Turn Over is approximately BDT 25,000,000.00 (Two Hundred Fifty Million).
Legal Status of KMSS
1. NGO Affairs Bureau Regd. No. 1848
2. Social Welfare Department Reg. No. Khulna/893/2000
3. Micro Credit Regulatory Authority Registration No. 01222-00357-00035
4. Family Planning Department Regd. No. 225
5. Department of Narcotics and Drug Control (DNC) No. 0020
6. Drug Treatment & Counseling Center License No.:- 01/2008-2009
7. Registration of Societies Act: S-4827 (948)/05
Human Resource
Male Staffs - 85, Female Staffs - 30. Total Staffs - 115
To Whom & How the Organization is Accountable:
The organization is maintaining forum stair accountability strongly. All Program/Project Heads are accountable to the Executive Director; the Executive Director is accountable to the President & Executive Committee, which consists of 07 members. Executive Committee is accountable to the General Committee of the organization and this committee is consisting of 31 members. However, for transparency in the governance system this organization also has a provision to be accountable to all of its stakeholders.
Key Contact Person:
AFROZA AKHTER MONJU
Executive Director, KMSS.