Community Development Services (CDS)

Community Development Services (CDS) was founded in 1978 as a family planning service provider complimenting the government’s population control program. From family planning to sexual and reproductive health interventions, to strategies for the poor, CDS continues to work for the rights and protection of sex workers, female and male low skilled migrant workers, youth in the plantation sector, adolescent and secondary school youth, and PLHIV’s and MSMs. As a technical service provider, CDS has engaged at a national and regional level in many consultations advocating fundamentally for the health rights and labor rights of low-skilled female migrant workers who are the most vulnerable in the migration discourse. Over the years, CDS has trained over 200 community-based civil society organizations in Sri Lanka on project related activities. Their mission is to bring together people from all segments of society especially vulnerable, at risk and marginalized population groups to represent and respect social equality into a movement that participates in the belief and practice of human rights, health rights, and integrated social development through national and international cooperation.