Young Bangla With an aim to unlock the potential of the Bangladeshi youth, Young Bangla provides opportunities for the youth to shine, recognising their talents and achievements, and further letting them shape the future of the country. Striving to break the existing stigmas and traditional ways of thinking, Young Bangla is the perfect platform that helps people by leading the transformation. Centre for Research and Information (CRI) is the secretariat for Young Bangla. “When we started Young Bangla, our vision was to reach out to young achievers across the country and provide them a platform,” Nasrul Hamid Bipu, State Minister for the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources who also sits on the trustee board of CRI, told the Dhaka Tribune. “We don't know their stories. We wanted to acknowledge them and give them a voice. At the same time, we wanted to enable them to enhance the scope of their talents and potentials.” Young Bangla gives an opportunity to help develop progressive policies, gathering inspirational young leaders across the nation, and help prosper their business ideas. This helps them get recognised for the difference they aim to create. It is the largest platform for the youth in Bangladesh that works to harness their innovation and energy, showcase their successes, help them grow further and enable them to mold not only their own future, but that of the nation’s. “Today, Young Bangla has expanded and it is quite a big platform. We are listening to the participants and their stories. Many schools that have enlisted under Monthly Pay Order (MPO) through this program have grown exponentially,” Bipu said. With this notion, Young Bangla organises the Joy Bangla Concert every year along with the Joy Bangla Youth Award Ceremony and the Vision 2021 Internship Program.
Joy Bangla Youth Award To make sure that the effort of the youth does not go unrecognised, Young Bangla also arranges an award giving ceremony called the “Joy Bangla Youth Award” ceremony where they acknowledge the untold stories and contributions of young achievers and leaders all over the country in a vast array of fields, helping them expand their wings. “We have not limited our efforts to urban areas. We have reached remote and isolated places at the border regions, for example. And we are getting bigger and bigger,” the minister said. It is essential to scale up the great work done by the youth in order to accelerate the all-encompassing development plan to achieve Vision 2021 and for building a sustainable Bangladesh. And Young Bangla believes that all the youth-led initiatives would be greater and more comprehensive if a strategic network along with a policy framework could be articulated at national level. “We want to create a platform through which the ideas of these brilliant young people will be turned into realities. We have teamed up a number of government ministries with Young Bangla. We are creating opportunities for internship in these ministries for these young participants. So, this will also help them find work in these government ministries if they wish,” Bipu told the Dhaka Tribune. Young Bangla does not consider Joy Bangla Youth Award a mere award ceremony. Rather, Young Bangla intends to establish this as a process – one that can comprehensively scale up the youth initiatives and construct linkages among the youth, policy-making bodies, and relevant government projects and programm.
Vision 2021 Internship The need for an internship program in the ministerial process has also been felt by Young Bangla platform. CRI is approaching to establish a link between brilliant young minds and ministries of the country. “The government has a budget allotted for the development of these youth. But we often don't listen to their ideas and dreams. We want to connect to them and this is why we created this platform,” said Bipu. “Our country has a huge demography of young people, those under 35 years of age. We want them to be involved in policy making. Their ideas will help the policy-makers,” said Bipu. The internship program is designed with four ministries – Power, Energy and Mineral Resources; Foreign Affairs; ICT; and Primary and Mass Education. The program will provide an opportunity for the potential young people of the country who possess the qualities to directly serve the nation. “The enormous turnout proves that we have already made an impact. I believe in the next five years this is going to be really big. Considering how much we got done in such a small time, we will have a strong momentum in five years,” the minister said. Moreover, this will allow young thinking minds with brilliant academic record from various institutions to interact with the officers of the Ministry. The internship program will provide the promising scholars with an excellent opportunity to familiarise them with the process of national power management, building Digital Bangladesh and an intellectual society, and the mechanism of maintaining diplomatic relationships with the Foreign Ministry.
Joy Bangla Concert The Joy Bangla concert series started last year and made a triumphant return this March 7. The show was headlined by heavy rock veterans Warfaze. Other performers were Shironamhin, Arbovirus, Lalon, Cryptic Fate, Nemesis and Shunno. The show was live-streamed online and was broadcast live on Channel 9. “The concert on March 7 is another important project of Young Bangla. The vision behind this was to get the biggest rock bands in our country to perform the liberation war songs on the occasion of the March 7 speech by Bangabandhu. The young people weren't there in 1971. We wanted to do something different for them. We want to recreate and encapsulate the vibe and the spirit of that day through this event. All of these initiatives are tied together and part of our overall vision,” the minister said. “People who are coming to these event identify with the spirit of our liberation war,” he added. “We want them to know the right history. Also, we believe this will enable the youth to embody every word of Bangabandhu's speech on March 7, and to get a sense of what Bangabandhu thought about (future) leadership. We want to pave the path to create that leadership.”