All Together Now
Two isolations, one project
The project began from two separate problems that turned out to share a solution.
The first was the position of gender-diverse communities in rural Bangladesh. An organised anti-rights movement had grown steadily — discriminatory publications circulating widely, public events cancelled, speakers barred, organisations and individuals targeted for supporting equality. Online and offline harassment, threats and violence had become routine. Exclusion operated at every level at once: within families, in workplaces, and in the wider society.
The second was the position of journalists. Reporting on marginalised communities had become professionally risky, with the Cyber Security Act narrowing what could safely be researched, published and advocated for. Media outlets and civil society organisations, meanwhile, had long operated at a distance from one another — two sectors working on overlapping problems with little shared language or trust.
All Together Now was built on the premise that these isolations reinforce each other. Communities without media allies remain invisible; journalists without community trust cannot report accurately or safely. The project set out to close that gap deliberately — building a support network around gender-diverse people, equipping both activists and journalists with the security skills their work now demands, and creating the conditions for the two sectors to work together rather than past each other.
Media and civil society, working as one
Noboprobhaat Foundation
Gender-diverse youth-led civil society organisation, Rangpur — leading community engagement, the Ally Support Group, and the safety and security components of the project.
Sakaler Kagoj
Media outlet, Kurigram — leading the storytelling work and anchoring the project’s media engagement in a climate-vulnerable district.
Why the structure mattered
The pairing was not an administrative convenience. Bringing a community-led organisation together with a working newsroom meant that community evidence and media practice developed together rather than sequentially — stories were produced with the people they were about, and the journalists producing them were trained alongside the activists they were reporting on.
What the project set out to do
Build awareness and acceptance. Increase understanding of gender-diverse communities among citizens, institutions and duty-bearers through advocacy meetings, awareness-raising and media initiatives.
Strengthen safety and security. Equip activists, journalists and community members with practical skills in safe communication, information security and digital self-protection.
Connect media and civil society. Build durable collaboration between newsrooms and community organisations so that marginalised voices are amplified accurately, ethically and safely.
What the project achieved in numbers
Component by component
The Ally Support Group
Discussing the rights of gender-diverse people at rural level in Bangladesh is difficult work. The project’s answer was to build a standing group rather than run one-off events — bringing together CSO leaders, media professionals, lawyers, police officers, students, NGO workers and community members. Thirty participants were engaged in its formation, and twelve monthly meetings followed with an average of 22 participants each. For Hijra and gender-diverse individuals in the region, it created a route to advocacy support that had simply not existed before.
Advocacy Meetings & Institutional Commitments
Two advocacy meetings — one opening the project, one closing it — convened civil society organisations, media outlets, NGOs and private institutions, with 46 and 45 participants respectively. The outcome was concrete rather than declarative: 25 organisations signed formal commitments (MoUs) on inclusion, safeguarding, non-discrimination and ethical storytelling.
Safe Communication & Information Security Training
A two-day residential training for activists, organisers and journalists facing security risks, with 36 participants. The programme covered password and device security, safe communication practice, and the ways gender-diverse people are misquoted or misrepresented in media — with practical remedies for each. Pre- and post-assessments recorded a 70% improvement in participants’ command of the material.
Digital Safety for Community Members
In rural Rangpur, online fraud, harassment and sextortion had become a common route through which gender-diverse youth were harmed. Training for 45 participants covered securing online profiles, recognising phishing and impersonation, privacy settings, and safer use of social media and dating platforms — with a 70% measured improvement in digital security knowledge.
Ethical Media Training
Thirty-five journalists and community representatives worked through ethical reporting, protection of survivors’ privacy, and the harm caused by stereotyping — alongside sessions on how misinformation, disinformation and malinformation affect marginalised communities. Real case studies and hands-on exercises kept the training grounded in the decisions journalists actually face.
Collective Security Guidelines
Rising threats to gender-diverse organisations across Bangladesh called for a shared response rather than isolated precautions. A coordination meeting brought 23 organisations together to identify common security challenges and develop emergency security guidelines collectively. The resulting guidelines were adopted by 15 organisations — a protocol built by the organisations that would have to live by it.
Storytelling from a Climate-Vulnerable District
Ten storytelling videos, produced in Kurigram, documented what flooding and river erosion mean for Hijra and gender-diverse people — displacement, exclusion from shelters and relief, and the absence of institutional recognition. Distributed through Sakaler Kagoj, the videos drew organic reach of over 40,000 views each — more than 400,000 in total — and prompted local government authorities to pledge inclusion of Hijra individuals in climate adaptation programmes and social safety nets.
National Crisis Response Action Planning & Network Building Meeting
The project’s final phase moved from local practice to national coordination. A national-level meeting brought organisations together to plan a collective crisis response — agreeing how information travels when someone is in danger, who can be called on, and what a coordinated response looks like in practice — and to consolidate the connections built over the project year into a working network rather than a list of contacts. The security guidelines developed earlier in the project gave the discussion something concrete to build on.
Project Closing Ceremony
The project closed publicly rather than quietly. A closing ceremony brought together community members, partner organisations, media professionals and invited guests to mark what the year had produced, share results with the people who had shaped them, and hand the commitments made during the project back to the network that would carry them.
Safety as a precondition, not a precaution
The project ran through a period of political instability and rising extremist activity, with gender-diverse communities in rural districts facing heightened threats of harassment, violence and social exclusion. In Rangpur and Kurigram, climate pressures compounded the picture — river erosion and flooding displacing communities that were already excluded from relief and shelter systems.
Rather than scale back, the project made safety a design condition of every activity: confidential venues, careful participant vetting, secure communication practice, and public visibility limited to what carried no risk to those involved. That discipline is why participation held steady through a year in which attending an event about these issues was, for many, a considered risk.
The change it leaves behind
The clearest evidence of what shifted came from the places where nothing was scheduled to happen. Local government authorities in Kurigram, having watched community stories rather than read a policy brief, publicly committed to including Hijra individuals in climate adaptation and social safety net programmes. Twenty-five organisations put their names to inclusion commitments they had not been asked for before. Journalists who had kept a professional distance from these communities began covering them — and covering them better.
- ✓Media and community organisations work better together than in parallel: pairing a newsroom with a community-led organisation produced storytelling that was both journalistically credible and safe for the people in it.
- ✓A standing group outperforms a series of events: twelve consecutive monthly meetings changed how participants understood the issues in a way that a single workshop could not have.
- ✓Security is stronger when built collectively: guidelines developed by 23 organisations together and adopted by 15 carry a legitimacy that no externally written protocol would have had.
- ✓Climate exclusion is a rights issue: documenting what disaster response looks like for Hijra and gender-diverse people turned an invisible harm into something local authorities felt obliged to answer for.
Communities without media allies stay invisible; journalists without community trust cannot report safely. This project closed the distance between them.