Rationale
Our country’s political and voting situation always causes
fear which creates a lack of interest among the general youth
towards participating in the election.
The purpose of this program was to prepare youth by
constructing their mindfulness on how youth can engage
themselves in shaping a positive election environment and
youth’s right as voters. Thorough this project participants
was able with opportunities to discuss and share their
concerns to their locality, career and education related
demands for 2018 National Election with local government
bodies, policy makers and leaders in meetings.
Objective
To provide youth a sense that their voice matters with
capacity and awareness in shaping Bangladesh’s democratic
future through their participation in the national election.
Activity Details
1. Pre-Workshop Phase
60 new participants were selected to attend the workshop from
each divisional district. Most of the participants were
selected based on their age between 18-28 years, who had
interest in Bangladesh’s democracy and ensuring democratic
rights of citizens and those who had shown interest and
intended to work to ensure youth participation in the election
process of Bangladesh. Curriculum and incentive workshop also
held by professional trainers in preparing participants and
contents for the workshops.
2. Workshops
To help and empower youth to develop their capacity by taking
community initiative for the nation, 480 youth were directly
trained through a two day long 16 workshops which were held in
8 divisional districts of Bangladesh. All the workshops
followed a fixed schedule and were split into two phases. In
the first phase, the trainer discussed democracy and covered
topics which included Election, Voting, and Voting in another
country. To make the workshops interesting, gaming sessions
were also included. In the second phase, the participants were
divided into 5 groups and were given a problem and were asked
to come up with online campaign on “how will you motivate
youth from your locality to vote” using innovative hashtags
related to the problem. They utilized social media platforms
to unveil the issues that matter to them most. Besides, the
participants got involved in fruitful discussion regarding
their locality, career and education related demands for 2018
National Election with local government bodies, policy makers
and leaders in meetings.
3. Post Workshop Phase
The post workshop activities started right after the workshop
in each divisional district. Participants from 8 divisions
conducted round table discussions on the topic “Youth Vote
Matters” with the local government bodies, policy makers, and
leaders of their locality.
A video was posted on social media to create awareness and
gain momentum and inspired youth to run the
“#youthvotematters” online campaign. The purpose of this video
material was to promote why youth’s opinion matters in shaping
the country’s future. The awareness video was viewed 106,000
times and shared 142 times on social media platforms.
