Aspiring towards more inclusiveness in the society and emphasizing diversity in leadership among the youth of the country, Bangladesh Youth Leadership Centre (BYLC)’s Youth Leadership Summit 2021 concluded on Saturday.

The four-day virtual summit, supported by Manusher Jonno Foundation (MJF) and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) of the UK Government, brought together over 300 youth who had been competitively selected from all over Bangladesh, in order to mobilize them towards taking steps forward in building a prosperous Bangladesh that provides equitable opportunities for all its citizens.

Connecting the delegates from 149 educational institutions across 45 districts, the theme of this year’s summit was ‘Journey towards an inclusive Bangladesh’. The sessions focused on listening to the concerns of marginalized youth, including young people with disabilities, youth from Dalit, madrassa, and low-income backgrounds, and transgender youth - according to the organizers.

The ultimate goal of the summit has been to guide delegates working together to craft solutions towards achieving inclusivity in terms of opportunities to work, exercising equal rights, access to better health, livelihood, education, and skills development within the society.

United News of Bangladesh - UNB was the official online news partner of this year’s summit.

A virtual closing ceremony titled “Reaffirming our commitment for a more inclusive tomorrow” was arranged on Saturday evening, marking the closure of the four-day long summit.

The closing ceremony was joined by lawmaker Nahim Razzaq MP, also the co-chairperson of United Nations Youth and Students Association Bangladesh (UNYSAB), alongside Robert Chatterton Dickson, British high commissioner to Bangladesh and BYLC Founder and President Ejaj Ahmed.

Lauding the summit, Nahim Razzaq said, “Bangladesh is a small country but we have progressed massively in the last few decades. It is the only nation in the world that has achieved independence on the basis of a youth-led language movement. Our youth should be able to voice out against issues and advocate knowledge-based solutions, and we need to initiate policy advocacy and youth-led actions to drive positive change and development.”

“There goes a proverb that If you think positively, positive things will happen to you. One-third of our population is the youth, and their contribution is very significant for our society. There have to be problems, and without problems, we cannot think about success,” he said to the participants of the summit.

British high commissioner to Bangladesh Robert Chatterson Dickson said, “If the world is going to achieve the goals it set out for itself, the only way it can achieve it is to have partnerships with young leaders. I always feel very optimistic whenever I engage with young people in Bangladesh. The degree of resilience, optimism that young people display is highly commendable.”

BYLC Founder and President Ejaj Ahmed said, “For the last four days, we have talked about inclusiveness, diversity, and where our youth want to take Bangladesh. It is very easy for a young person to resign but we need to address this. Even when we fail, it is how we deal with the failure and that determines our long term success. As an organization, BYLC has had a lot of failures in the last 13 years of its journey but we haven’t resigned because of the failure, and we want our youth not to resign when facing difficulties in the journey of leadership.”

The  summit concluded with a virtual cultural event where the participants showcased their cultural performances including fascinating presentations of songs, dance and poetry recitations.