Grameen Kalyan

A Social Business CompanySince 1996

GRAMEEN KALYAN is a not-for-profit, Social Business Company in the Grameen family of companies; established in 1996, registered with RJSC under the Companies Act (C-388(08)/96) on 06 November 1996 and with NGO Affairs Bureau (No - 1725) on 02 July 2002. Nobel Peace Laureate and Olympic Laurel Professor Muhammad Yunus is the Founder of Grameen Kalyan.

Grameen Kalyan’s 27+ years of experience reveals that, SOCIAL BUSINESS is not only a feasible, effective & financially sustainable model for providing Primary Healthcare in developing countries but also potentially capable of achieving scale maintaining the affordability.

Enabling and Empowering People to Elevate Themselves Out of Poverty Cycle Since 1996

Currently, Grameen Kalyan is operating through 144 Community Based Health Centers located in 30 districts of Bangladesh. Each year Grameen Kalyan provides healthcare services to around 750,000 people through its health centers and satellite programs. Besides that, additional 7 million people in rural communities receive free basic healthcare check-up under Grameen Kalyan’s domiciliary and school health programs.

In the early nineties, a study revealed that without improvement in healthcare, the poor cannot stay out of poverty for long time. Microcredit could bring them out of poverty but to keep them out of poverty permanently, healthcare inequalities for the poor must be addressed. Observing the reality, Nobel Laureate Prof. Muhammad Yunus undertook an experimental project named “Rural Health Program (RHP)” in 1993 through Grameen Trust. Upon its success, RHP was handed over to Grameen Kalyan (GK) in 1997 immediately after its inception and since then it has been operating as a core program of Grameen Kalyan.

Over the time, GK has evolved a cost-effective, equitable, self-sustainable and extended rural health program for the indigent people by implementing the concept of community-based health centers, bringing the health outreach services to the doorsteps of the villagers and mobilizing beneficiaries through Micro Health Insurance (MHI) scheme. Along with providing primary healthcare directly, Kalyan has been promoting secondary & tertiary healthcare indirectly through functional referral services.

Grameen Kalyan Health Program has successfully initiated a set of grassroots level health infrastructure and health delivery system in which quality, sustainability and coverage of the underprivileged are the central preoccupations. Through its curative & preventive health services, Grameen Kalyan promotes accurate identification of common illness in outpatient settings, strengthens the counseling of healthcare during outreach activities, and performs timely referral services for acutely ill individuals.

Grameen Kalyan continues to extend its support for the well-being of Grameen Bank (GB) borrowers, employees and their family members thru providing higher education loan & scholarship to the children of GB Borrowers and rendering medical, household loan and emergency financial assistance to the GB Employees.

Grameen Kalyan has always been responsive to facilitate Food, Healthcare services and Relief assistance to the people affected by various Natural calamities and Disasters whenever the country is in need. Combating with Covid-19 Pandemic is also not an exception in this regard.

Ever since the inception of Grameen Bank in 1976, Professor Muhammad Yunus was concern of the fact that, health improvement is an indispensable integral part of poverty alleviation. Consequently, Grameen Kalyan’s all efforts and initiatives were focused on solving Social Issues like rural healthcare, elevating livelihood, job creation, and other specific social causes.

Since 2006, Grameen Kalyan has been actively involved in establishing & promoting Social Business entities operating diverse sectors like Agriculture, Nutrition, Healthcare, Value Chain, Finance, and Information Technology. Another massive success of Grameen Kalyan was creating around 30,000 micro entrepreneurs in the rural economies, through 'Nobin Equity Investment Program' (formerly known as Nobin Udyokta - Young Entrepreneur Investment Program) from 2014-2023.