Who we are
A Bangladeshi organisation, held to global standards.
International Relief & Development Foundation works across emergency relief, disaster response and long-term community development.
Our story
It started with one boat and a list of names.
Registered as a non-profit in Bangladesh and working continuously in the field ever since.
IRDF began the way most useful things begin — with people who could not look away. After a cyclone season that left whole unions cut off, a handful of teachers, engineers and shopkeepers pooled what they had, hired a boat, and went to find the households nobody had counted.
That list of names became a method. Count first. Ask what is needed rather than assume. Publish what was spent. Hand the work to the people who will still be there next year.
We are not here to be the story. We are here so that the next flood is smaller news.
Today that method runs across 9 active projects and six thematic programmes — emergency response, food security and livelihoods, water and sanitation, child rights and education, climate resilience, and gender equality. The teams are almost entirely local. The accountability is deliberately uncomfortable: grant-level spending, independent monitoring, and a complaint line that reports to the board rather than to programme managers.
How we work
Four commitments we publish and are judged on.
48-hour response
Pre-positioned stock and standing agreements mean we move before the assessment is finished.
Community-held budgets
Local committees see the budget line, approve the beneficiary list and sign the completion note.
Published spending
Income and expenditure by grant, by district, every quarter — including what we got wrong.
Evidence over anecdote
Independent monitors, tracer studies and open datasets behind every claim we make.
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People reached
Direct beneficiaries across 26 districts
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Emergency responses
Floods, cyclones, fires and displacement
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Green electricity
Solar capacity installed with communities
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Girls kept in school
Scholarships, clubs and legal protection
Our programmes
Where the work happens
Emergency Relief & Disaster Response
Rapid, dignified assistance in the first hours of a crisis — food, water, shelter, cash and protection.
Food Security & Livelihoods
Climate-smart farming, savings groups and skills training that move families out of dependency.
Water, Sanitation & Hygiene
Safe water points, household latrines and hygiene behaviour change in the hardest-to-reach unions.
Child Rights, Education & Protection
Ending child marriage, keeping girls in school, and building safe referral pathways.
Climate Resilience & Renewable Energy
Solar irrigation, early warning systems and nature-based adaptation designed with the community.
Gender Equality & Social Inclusion
Women-led enterprise, GBV response and inclusion of persons with disabilities across every programme.
Leadership
Accountable people, named in public
Dr. Sharmin Akter
Director, Programmes
Rafiqul Islam
Director, Finance & Compliance
Nusrat Jahan
Head of Gender & Inclusion
Arif Mahmud
Head of Emergency Response
Stand with the field teams
A flood does not wait for a funding cycle.
Give once, give monthly, or give your time. Every route ends in the same place — a household that gets help before the water does.