ORIGINAL ARTICLE Social Work Practice for Social Development in Bangladesh: Issues and Challenges Md. Ismail Hossain 1 and Golam M. Mathbor 2 1 Department of Social Work, Shahjalal University of Science & Technology, Sylhet, Bangladesh; 2 School of Social Work, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, New Jersey, USA Social work addresses social issues that constrain the betterment of a community. However, social work practice is struggling to deal effectively with the development challenges of Bangladesh. Based on a literature review and the experiences of the authors, this paper explores the emerging issues where social work practice is anticipated as a promising alternative for bringing sustainable social development in Bangladesh. Simultaneously, the paper discovers the limitation of social work prac- tice in Bangladesh addressing these challenges. Keywords professional practice; social development; social problems; social welfare; social work doi:10.1111/aswp.12030 Introduction Bangladesh is a developing country in South Asia which is characterized by a series of problems, such as poverty, illiteracy, poor health, unemployment, gender inequality, vio- lence against women, corruption, crime, and, above all, frequent natural disasters. Being a part of the world’s economy, Bangladesh is also facing global economic challenges which make the lives of poor people more precarious and vulnerable. To address these issues, Bangladesh has adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and set forth a number of strategies. Social work practitioners 1 are playing an active role delivering wel- fare services and achieving development goals. However, social workers are not viewed as core agents for social development of Bangladesh. Thus, the main aim of this paper is to explore why social workers are not involved in current social development efforts. Based on anecdotal experiences of the author(s), who have been involved in social work for almost two decades, this paper argues that social work practices are a promising alterna- tive for the sustainable social development of Bangladesh. However, professional development of social work has had many turns and twists, and social workers have not Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Md. Ismail Hossain, Department of Social Work, Shahjalal University of Science & Technology, Sylhet-3114, Bangladesh. Email: ismail-scw@sust.edu 1 The term “social work practitioner” has been used frequently instead of “social worker”. Many development activists and social welfare workers have not acquired an academic degree in social work but they are using social work knowledge in their practice. © 2014 The Authors Asian Social Work and Policy Review © 2014 Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd 1 Asian Social Work and Policy Review 8 (2014) 1–15