Young Bangladeshi researcher Rakibul Hasan will join the cohort of 20 inspiring global Young Leaders to improve the lives of thousands of girls and women through his leading idea, “Peacempire” project in Bangladesh.
Women Deliver, a leading global leadership program, has recently announced a class of 20 fellows from 15 countries and has provided a seed grant of $5000 each to implement projects in their communities.
“With the new Women Deliver seed grants, 20 inspiring young leaders from 15 countries can catalyse action and improve the lives of thousands of girls and women in their communities,” says Katja Iversen, CEO and President of Women Deliver in a Press Release.
The 20 grants are part of the Women Deliver Young Leaders Program, which provides opportunities for exclusive youth advocates to build and strengthen their capacity and skills and finds platforms for themselves to share their voices and experiences.
The grants are funded by Johnson & Johnson, a founding partner of the Women Deliver Young Leaders Program and long supporter of youth advocacy.
“They are powerful voices and agents of change for their own needs, transforming policy, programs, cultural norms and their communities for the better,” said Lauren Moore, Vice President, Corporate Citizenship, Johnson & Johnson.
As a leading global advocate for girls’ and women’s health, rights and wellbeing, Women Deliver (USA) brings together diverse voices and interests to drive progress, particularly in maternal, sexual, and reproductive health and rights. It builds capacity, shares solutions, and forges partnerships, together creating coalitions, communication, and actions that spark political commitment and investment in girls and women. Women Deliver believes that when the world invests in girls and women, everybody wins.
Among 200 global Young Leaders, a total of 20 youths have been finalised from 15 countries to receive this prestigious grant. Three fellows hail from Nigeria. India, Zimbabwe and Kenya have two grantees each, and the rest have gone to Bangladesh, Australia, Croatia, Botswana, Nepal, Philippines, Ghana, Jordan, Cameroon, Malawi and Indonesia.
Earlier in 2015, Rakibul became one of 200 Global Young Leaders, a three-year long fellowship program of Women Deliver in USA.
As part of the fellowship, he recently attended the 4th Global Women Deliver conference, held from May 14-20, in Copenhagen, Denmark.
In the conference, he successfully represented Bangladesh in a number of events, among others, regional caucus, country meeting, panel sessions, cross-cultural activism and young dialogue in the Danish capital of Copenhagen.
During the conference, Curious Minds Ghana, a popular West African radio station, invited Rakibul, along with noted journalists and writers in a continental panel of broadcasting youth voices titled "Leveraging the Power of the Media to Promote Young People’s SRHR" on Wednesday May 18, 2016 at Bella center.
This unique radio session was broadcast live to a global audience, and later played on national radio in Ghana during the end of the conference.
The Women Deliver fellowship program required him to attend an eight-month long mentorship course online. While continuing the E-Course in early 2015, Rakibul started rigorous research on the issues of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) of young adolescents in Bangladesh and later, he mainstreamed major outcomes in international conferences and journals. He still contributes articles, Op-Eds and columns to major newspapers home and beyond.
Through the fellowship, Rakibul initiated a project called Peacempire, which is designed to train young people to be citizen journalists in the fields of storytelling, reporting, blogging on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights to break the taboo of ages and create social awareness against early forced marriage and violence against women involving young advocates, aged 15 to 25, from 3 colleges, 10 secondary schools and 5 madrasas in underprivileged areas of Rupganj, Narayanganj.
Through advocacy workshops and campaigns, a number of 35 community reporters, 25 peer educators, 700 young advocates and 1000 campaigners will play their roles to minimise the rate of early forced marriage and violence against women in the subdistrict.
The mega campaigns will be held once in every two months bringing 500 people each time, 1500 in total by the end of the project. Thus the projected reach of the program is 2022 adolescents, with an indirectly outreach to more than 17402 people and 50,000 virtually in selected 34 villages.
This youth-led project technically forms a coalition bringing together local SRHR experts, traditional leaders, political quarters, administrative bodies and victims in a quest to implement enduring practices in the society.
It tries to build capacity of young advocates to effectively respond to early marriage and gender violence via digital media, and other available social media outlets to ensure legal interventions and public engagements in the cases.