Young volunteers and social entrepreneurs came together to celebrate the International Volunteer Day (IVD) through a pitching competition for inspirational and innovative projects organised by the United Nations Volunteer (UNV) programme and the Voluntary Service Oversees (VS0). The programme was held on December 6 at the Central Public Library Auditorium of Dhaka University.
To face global and national changes, as well as to ensure effective implementation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we hear more and more talks on innovation.
At the IVD Celebration the answer was clear: innovation is not just about brand new ideas, innovation is about looking at the vibrant and inspiring realities that are already there combining different expertise, knowledge, perspective, and mainly partnerships.
Volunteers like social entrepreneurs transform social challenges into opportunities. Why not combining the sustainability of an entrepreneurial spirit with the knowledge sharing and capacity building power of volunteerism?
To celebrate talks around the potential of this inspiring new partnership between volunteers and entrepreneurs, the chairman of BUILD, Asif Ibrahim, addressed the youth expressing the desire of seeing more of these types of initiatives in the future and seeing incredible potential in exploring new partnerships for development to ensure the participation of the private sector in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.
The jury that evaluated the pitching performance of the young volunteers and entrepreneurs was composed by Tania Wahab, director of BWCCI; SM Quamrul Hasan, deputy project director of the Ministry of Youth and Sports; Aminul Islam, deputy secretary of MoWCA; and AKM Moninuddin, diplomatic correspondent of United News of Bangladesh.
The videos of the winner of the INSPIRATION category, Joseph Chakma, will be soon available online, while the winners of the ACTION category, Samuel Birmingam and Beatrice Cabecadas, will have the opportunity to transform their inspiration into action thanks to a $3,000 prize to realise their project sponsored by UNV and VSO.
Linda Germanis, head of the UNV programme in Bangladesh and Simon Brown, country director of VSO both highlighted the support of their organisations to exploring the potential of this new partnership for development of volunteerism and entrepreneurship.
