Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina took stock of the activities and progress of the country’s largest youth network, Young Bangla — stressing the need for reaching out to the youth at the grassroots to hear their voices and engage them in the pursuit to change the course of national progress.
A team, accompanied by CRI trustee and State Minister for Power, Energy, and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid, comprising staff of Center for Research and Information (CRI), a not for profit organization, and Young Bangla, exchanged views with the premier at her official residence on Tuesday.
During discussion, the PM stressed on the need for empowerment and inclusion of youths and for scaling up the start-up ecosystem that would enable them to become self-employed instead of looking for jobs.
Read: Young Bangla celebrates the power of changemakers at the grassroots
Young Bangla team members apprised her of holding a series of its signature initiative, “Lets Talk”, at the grassroots level for the last couple of months, opening up the opportunity to rural youths to speak about their concerns and ideas before policymakers. The PM also listened to observations of youths accumulated by the platform through its series of interactive sessions.
Photos of the PM standing with the team members have gained traction on social media with many young members registered with the platform calling this interaction “an exciting step that would reap more dividends for the youths.”
According to last year’s government census, the country’s current youth population stands at a staggering 45.9 million.
Read: Young Bangla: Recognising, grooming, connecting young changemakers
Last year, the premier joined Young Bangla as a member, drawing overwhelming applause from the members of the network with many changemakers calling it a “source of inspiration.”
Launched in 2014, Young Bangla has been acting as a space for the youth to come together into a network and collectively strive for achieving personal and national goals through sharing and cooperation, according to the platform’s website.
As of now, the platform boasts a staggering 3,00,000 active members while under one of its flagship initiatives, Joy Bangla Youth Award — named after the historic Liberation War-time slogan “Joy Bangla” — 135 youth-led organisations have been identified, recognized, showcased and connected covering all the districts.
PM, a reader of Whiteboard
PM also revealed that she is a consistent reader of the country’s first policy magazine Whiteboard — another initiative of CRI. The magazine objectively and comprehensively analyses and narrates the policies in Bangladesh.
Read: Country’s largest youth platform Young Bangla gets a big boost from PM Hasina
Radwan Mujib Siddiq, a trustee of CRI, is the editor of the magazine while a very diverse pool of writers from home and abroad writes for the magazine.
Launched in 2020, the quarterly policy magazine has seen release of six editions so far, covering a gamut of issues with regards to policy analysis.