Max Foundation

Our Impact Report 2025 is here! This year's theme is Scaling What Lasts.

In one of the hardest years our sector has faced, with deep cuts to development budgets across Europe, this was the year our work took real steps towards lasting scale. In Ethiopia, our Healthy Village approach and the government's own model have merged into the Malnutrition-Free Healthy Village, now the central model in the national strategy to end child stunting by 2030, with the ambition to reach 125 million people. An approach that began in a handful of villages will now be rolled out nationwide.

Alongside this, in Bangladesh the government has adopted two nutrition data and budgeting tools we developed with partners, and Max TapWater grew to 98 water grids reaching over 22,000 people. In Nepal, we launched Healthy Village with local government leading from day one.

📖 Read more: https://maxfoundation.org/impact-report-2025/

Impact Report 2025 - Max Foundation Impact Report 2025: Scaling What Lasts. Read more on how our child-health work is taking root in government systems in Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Nepal.

How do you make sure every young child gets the nutrition they need? First you have to know two things: who those children are, and what reaching them actually costs.

That's what our Child Profile Estimation and Costing Model does. It maps how many children under five live in an area, how many are malnourished, and which services they're missing. Then it puts a real price tag on closing those gaps. A moral case becomes a budget line a local council can plan for and a ministry can fund.

The result? In Bangladesh, the National Nutrition Council has endorsed the model, and it's now being written into the country's next national nutrition plan.

Read more:

Child Profile Estimation and Costing Model - Max Foundation If a government wants to keep its youngest children well-nourished, it first needs to know two things: who those children are, and what reaching them actually costs.

Today is World Menstrual Hygiene Day.
Menstrual health is not only a matter of hygiene, it is a matter of dignity, access, and equity.

When girls and women lack access to safe water, sanitation, privacy, and accurate information, education is disrupted, health risks increase, and participation in daily life becomes more difficult.

Addressing menstrual health therefore requires more than distributing products. It requires strengthening water and sanitation systems, ensuring supportive school environments, and integrating menstrual health into broader health and community services.

When these systems function, menstruation does not limit opportunity.

*Image of Healthy Promotion Agent showing the menstrual pads she sells.

Five neighbours watched Khadiza Begum connect her home to the new piped water grid in early 2023. Not long after, they decided to get connected to the piped water supply too.

Within 16 months, 62 households in Krishnakathi village had invested BDT 660,000 (~€4,664) in upgraded sanitation facilities — latrines, basins, bathing chambers — using their own savings and small loans.

Before the grid, Khadiza’s family relied on a tubewell 15 minutes away that ran dry in winter and was often contaminated. She carried the primary responsibility for water collection every day.

The one-time connection fee was BDT 5,000 (~€35). Monthly tariff BDT 200 (~€1). Two years later, her youngest has had diarrhoea twice. Before the tap — every other month.
The infrastructure enabled the investment. The community made it happen.

Read the full story here: https://maxfoundation.org/story/households-in-rular-bangladesh/

Households in Rular Bangladesh Invest in Sanitation - Max Foundation How a community in Krishnakathi village, Bangladesh, invested 660,000 Bangladeshi Taka in Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene facilities after a piped water grid reached 62 households.