Note: This originally appeared on Daily Star (Original Link | PDF)

Unilever, in partnership with UK's Department for International Development (DFID), will support five social enterprises in Bangladesh through a joint initiative, TRANSFORM.

Founded in 2015, the initiative brings private sector creativity and commercial approaches to solve persistent global development challenges.

TRANSFORM assists in providing market-based solutions that meet low-income household needs in developing countries through financial and business support for social enterprises.

So far, it has supported 32 projects across 10 countries, with the number of beneficiaries exceeding 5 lakh.

About the projects under TRANSFORM, a press conference was held at Spectra Convention Hall in Gulshan yesterday.

Tanzeen Ferdous, director of Home Care at Unilever Bangladesh Ltd, delivered welcome speech.

Unilever Bangladesh and the five current grantees spoke about TRANSFORM and the positive impact the partnership can have on enterprises and people in Bangladesh.

Minhaj Chowdhury, CEO, Drinkwell; SM Rumat Ashraf, general manager, HappyTap; Abdus Shaheen, country programme manager, Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor; Jonathan Levine, founder and CEO, Folia Water; and Claire Benveniste, sanitation technical advisor, Shobar Jonno Pani, discussed among others.