Steps Towards Development was established by a group of facilitators with a common understanding of gender equality and rights to develop Gender Activist groups as well as Gender-responsive CSOs in the community. In the last three decades, Steps has always tried to focus on establishing women’s human rights and gender equality considering this is a major and long-standing social issue in Bangladesh. Steps started by developing its Network, Training, and Materials Development components. Through these components, Steps reached out to communities and individuals to promote gender equality and human rights. Even in its early years, Steps immediately gained recognition in both the local and national levels as a gender-promoting organization.

Steps is now a well reputed national organization in Bangladesh for its contribution in policy advocacy, research, reporting on international commitments from civil society perspective and undertaking outreach activities at the community level. Steps has been implementing its program on promotion and protection of women human rights and gender equality with particular focus on violence against women. Steps has skills and knowledge on effective print and audio-visual IEC materials as well as training modules. In previous years, Steps successfully managed projects worth more than 10 million USD. Steps has consultative status with ECOSOC and allied with various human rights forums/platforms and international human rights treaty procedures like CEDAW, UPR, CSW, Beijing PFA, SDG etc. Today, Steps’ outreach expands across 19 district-based local networks covering more than 122 local NGOs in 55 sub-districts, 255 union/wards and 500 secondary schools in Bangladesh.