Fourteen Maryknoll Sisters have lived in Bangladesh since the first three arrived in 1979 at the invitation of the archbishop of Dacca. They had language study and an acculturation period with a local Bengali community of Sisters. On the streets they noticed that many of the married women still wore the burqa, an overall covering.

At the archbishop’s request, they joined one of the Bengali Sisters in the ministry of Natural Family Planning on a diocesan level. The Sisters got the program under the sponsorship of Caritas, the government registered program for social projects of the bishops of Bangladesh. Later they were invited to set up the program in other dioceses. Other ministries over the years included an outreach program for third degree malnourished children; seminary teaching; hospital and clinic work.

Two Sisters started a program for women drug addicts but shifted to prevention through education, the Bangladesh Alternative Course for Human Advancement (BACHA). After topics such as AIDS, self esteem and human rights were adapted to the Bangladeshi culture and language, they were printed in a textbook.  They train young women and men as facilitators to incorporate an innovative curriculum of human values in secondary schools.

Because the majority of BACHA’s  teachers and students in Bangladesh are Muslim with a minority of Hindus and Christians, the training course shows how human values are reinforced by the basic teachings of the great world religions as well as Christianity. This education for life program has spread to several dioceses, reaching thousands of students in high schools, a college, and houses of religious formation.