Some of the best ideas are a wonderful blend of serendipity and of being able to see what others cannot. Two amazing people who have that kind of vision are key to the origin story behind the Bangladeshi organization that has just won the 2025 Earthshots Prize in the category of fixing the climate.

French adventurer Yves Marre was living in an old riverboat in Paris in the 1990s when he imagined it becoming a floating hospital that would serve the poorest residents of Bangladesh. While the French government wanted to phase out the old barges, it took him months to persuade them to sell him the 120-foot long vessel for one French franc. “They would not give it to me for free because they thought if I met with an accident they might be held responsible.”

That was because he planned to sail the barge to Bangladesh, although he had no contacts there. Then, during a visit to Dhaka in 1993, he encountered classical music expert and Sufi scholar Alimur Rahman Khan, who helped him find a sponsor for the project, and who in 1996 became his father-in-law through marriage to his daughter Runa.

Getting the barge to Bangladesh proved challenging and complicated, but at Demra, Mother Teresa came on board. “Her graceful presence on the vessel at Demra and then her help in turning it into a hospital threw me into tears,” said Yves.

When Runa Khan, a social entrepreneur who had been working on literacy projects, sought help in establishing the first floating hospital, many NGOs thought the idea was ambitious and unworkable. “Everywhere I went, people said this was impossible,” she said. “I was told to build a normal hospital in the nearest town. But I had seen the poverty in the chars and I knew that that wouldn’t help them.” The people living there had no schools, no health care, and no administration. They are the ultra poor, people who have often had to move many times in their lifetime due to climate change.

So Runa and Yves founded their own NGO, Friendship, and with the aid of corporate funding from Unilever, which believed in their vision, created the first hospital ship. The Lifebuoy Friendship, launched in 2002, provided care for people living on the sandbar islands of the mighty Jamuna River (Brahmaputra) in northern Bangladesh.

It was followed in 2008 by the Emirates Friendship hospital ship, which was built at the Taratari shipyard in Chittagong that Yves founded in 2004. The Emirates Airline Foundation uses donated points to provide free travel for volunteer doctors from all over the world. Then in 2012, there was a third hospital ship—the Rongdhonu Friendship Hospital, formerly Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior II.

A three-tier system evolved that let Friendship take health care to 615 villages. It began sending out teams of nurses and medics to villages to create ‘satellite clinics’, and started training local women from the chars as Friendship Community Medic-aides on call to give immediate assistance and call for ambulances if needed. “We realized that you cannot have a healthcare system which is the same in the cities and these unreachable areas. You have to change the system with the available resources and socio-economic capability of the people.”

“With these three Friendship floating hospitals and 400 satellite clinics, we have treated around 4.2 million poor people over the last 13 years,” Runa told the Arab News in 2017.

Over the past two decades, Friendship has grown into a dedicated social purpose organisation with almost 5,000 employees, giving direct services to more than 7.5 million people annually. It has delivered over 24 million healthcare services and 8.3 million days’ worth of emergency food support, and gives over 80,000 people daily access to safe drinking water in coastal areas.

Its mangrove afforestation program is the largest privately-led initiative of its kind in Bangladesh. Combining nature-based and locally led adaptation, it has planted over 650,000 trees across more than 200 hectares of mangroves, prepared an additional 120 hectares for future planting, and safeguarded 62 kilometres of vulnerable shoreline. In doing so, it supports community livelihoods, strengthens coastal protection, and builds lasting ownership through participatory management.

By 2030, it aims not only to reduce the climate vulnerability of the population but to ensure lasting improvements in community resilience, dignity, socioeconomic opportunities, and quality of life, driven by systems that are locally owned, ecologically sustainable, replicable, and scalable across similarly fragile areas.

“For over two decades, Friendship has worked in some of the most climate-vulnerable regions of Bangladesh — from the shifting river islands in the north to the cyclone-prone coastal belt and the mangrove forests of the Sundarbans,” it says. “Our mission has always been guided by an integrated, human-centred approach that links the environment with social and economic development, through scalable, replicable, nature-based and locally-led development solutions.”

A model that has been lauded both by the government and climate change experts, it grew from working closely with local communities to understand their needs. “Over the years of servicing the ultra-poor and climate change impacted communities, we have learned that the poor cannot afford poor solutions,” says William Lebedel, chairman of Friendship France. “Poor solutions mean defective service delivery, and the premise behind giving itself being poor. It is only where the mind-set of the giver is based on truth and respect that recipients respond equally, building on the support they receive. There can be no sustainable development without mutual respect and therefore dignity.”

The Earthshots prize recognizes innovative solutions to the planet’s greatest challenges. The five Earthshots are Protect and Restore Nature; Clean our Air; Revive our Oceans; Build a Waste-Free World; and Fix our Climate. Each year, from a shortlist of 15 finalists, five winners are awarded The Earthshot Prize – one for each Earthshot. In the years leading up to 2030, HRH Prince William and a distinguished Prize Council are awarding £1 million to five Winners, one per Earthshot.

Friendship was selected from nearly 2,500 candidates submitted by 575 nominators from 72 countries. The 15 finalists were chosen based on assessments undertaken by the Earthshot Prize’s selection partners and expert advisory panel.

As well as Friendship’s demonstrated holistic climate adaptive solutions, other solutions recognised this year include ‘Protecting the Atlantic Forest’ by re.green, reducing air pollution by the City of Bogota, The High Seas Treaty for its most ambitious ocean initiatives, and Lagos Fashion Week shaped how brands behave year-round.