Nasir Uddin, 48, is the elected Chairman of Golkhali Union Parishad — the lowest tier of local government — in Patuakhali District, Bangladesh. In May 2022 he attended the Right2Grow programme’s union inception meeting, an introductory session bringing together local government officials and community structures. He left with a clear commitment: to use his position to act on child malnutrition in the union using the resources already available to him. 

In June 2022, Nasir announced the open budget of Golkhali Union Parishad. For the first time in the union’s history, he included a budget line specifically for children’s nutrition. He also requested a list of malnourished children from across the union’s nine wards. Aware that a list prepared internally by his own council could be biased, he asked Right2Grow to compile it independently. Right2Grow Union Coordinator Md. Saiful Islam identified ten children from the poorest households across all nine wards and submitted the list to the Chairman. 

Nasir committed to distributing food to all ten children for at least six months. The first month’s package included rice, lentils, soyabean oil, eggs, milk, and sugar — covering the dietary diversity young children need to recover from or avoid acute malnutrition. The funding came from the Union Parishad budget: local government money, directed at child nutrition, through a formal and public process.

The Right2Grow programme works to strengthen the connection between community demand and local government action on nutrition, Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH), and maternal and child health. Its 779 women-led Community Support Organisations (CSOs) in Bangladesh advocate with Union Parishads for improved services and budget allocations. Nasir’s decision is the kind of outcome the programme works toward: a local official using existing mechanisms and budgets, without waiting for external resources. 

The community response was visible. Golkhali residents began calling him Shishu Bandhab Chairman — Bengali for ‘child-friendly chairman.’ The label reflects a shift in how his role is understood locally: not just as an administrator, but as someone publicly accountable for child welfare in the union. The significance of what Nasir did is not only what he distributed, but how he structured it. By using the Union Parishad budget rather than ad hoc contributions, and by having the list compiled independently, he created a precedent: child nutrition as a formal line item in local government planning, with accountability built in from the start.