Rationale

Although Bangladesh has had tremendous economic growth over the past few decades but still has not been able to hold up the employment elasticity of the country. Barriers to employment include reasons such as; shortage of job opportunities, poor quality of training and certificate accreditation, favoritism, social stigma, and most importantly, lack of proper skills.

JAAGO is a youth lead organization with a network of 50,000 youth volunteers. Volunteers for Bangladesh (VBD) works across 51 districts in Bangladesh on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and other campaigns including local issues. The proposed project is highly appropriate and timely for JAAGO where the activities will be undertaken and organized by the youth with high-level consultation with experts on the project content (sessions). It is expected that the findings from the consultation sessions will have the insights and recommendations of the youth along with the directions from the skilled experts. These sessions would help them achieve a clear national youth vision, understand ILO’s declaration for the future of work, and build them as skilled and competent individuals to join the labor force.

Objective

• To increase the knowledge of youth on civic engagement, education, and employment and develop their skills
• To develop networks for hundreds of young people across the country and shape them as a quality workforce for the future

Activity Details

The project was designed to promote the youth engagement of Bangladesh by connecting them with influential young leaders, experts, and practitioners from corporate and development sectors, develop their skills through training, dialogue sessions and provide knowledge through groundbreaking new tools and resources, take action and create impact by engaging them in new opportunities to bring a sustainable impact in local and global communities and develop their capacities for joining the labor market in the future. The project organized four seminars with a total of 320 youth participants from four divisional districts to gain knowledge on employment, entrepreneurship, and other skills followed by a closing session which included sharing the feedback from the divisional seminars. A total of 500,000 people were reached through mass media and social media.