Ideas to Action, its Empowering Asia

DHAKA: Every student is unique with different abilities, and one can only establish as a quality person if they pursue their interests. Youths are most value able resources of a country. They have the ability to transform a country to a better state of development. According to a recent report, the total youth population of the world is 1.2 billion youth of which 90 percent of them are in developing countries. Eight in 10 of those youth live in Africa and Asia.

So, it’s very important to help these young minds flourish. So, the best way to build and sustain development is through educating and empowering these young minds.  Further all these young minds are also deprived of opportunities to make a difference.  In all these circumstances, a new hope has arrived in the form of a project-Empowering Asia.

Empowering Asia is a regional empowerment project, which aims to aware high school (Grade 9-12) students about the need for the development of Scholarship, Leadership and Citizenship (SLC) amid youth in the South Asia region and give them the tools, skills and necessary inspiration to be a part of the digital revolution and ultimately active agents of impactful change in their local communities.

The main aim of this program is to inspire, create and support the next generation of young leaders to passionately design, implement and sustain innovative (social action) projects in their local communities. Sadiq Miah(UK) co-founded this project alongside Nimesh Ghimire(Nepal), a fellow member of British Council`s network from Nepal. This project was awarded Rachel Petkac CAP grant by the British Council`s Global Changemakers, and is a merger of Goreto and Future Voices International`s core values.

Empowering Asia mainly focuses mainly on:

Scholarship: Scholarship refers to the intellectual ability of any person, and can only be nurtured when people not just learn for the sake of learning but do it with their own drive and passion. The general picture suggests that most of the education system is all about natural sciences, and people shun students who opt for social sciences. The Scholarship aspects of the talk should focus on inspiring the high school students to realize the inner call of their life, to encourage them to pursue their interests. Only then we can expect a society full of intellectuals, true and passionate to their interests, ready to offer their skills for building our society.

Leadership: A country needs leaders. Not just political, but social leaders, leaders in science, leaders who can handle the economy—cream of the crop who can work together to bring change home. This framework believes that we need to ‘catch students young’ and make them realize the need for initiatives in filling the voids they see. The job is to create leaders and to make change.

Citizenship: Leadership trait is alone not enough for inspiring the people to thrive for a better community around them. Intellect ability and leadership attribute blended with ethics is imperative for preparing the next generation of holistic leaders who put national interest first and aid in setting up institutions critical for long term economic and political stability of South Asia.

Recently a group of students successfully completed this project in India, Nepal and Bangladesh. In Bangladesh the project was conducted in two parts i.e. the Urban and Rural Part via a training workshop. The workshop was based on Leadership and communication skill development training. The Urban Part was organized in Ali Ahmed School and College on 12th January, 2012.

The co founder of this project Mr. Sadiq Miah coordinated the workshop along with a team from Military Institute of Science and Technology (MIST) led by Al Amin.  The participants were from Ali Ahmed School and College, KPB School and College and Tnt High School. A total of 29 Bangladeshi students participated in the urban workshop where the participants was trained how to design a social project.

The students designed several social projects regarding different social issues like Agricultural problem, Drug addiction, Education system etc. After evaluating the best presentation from the workshop 6 best participants was given chance to travel with Empowering Asia team to travel to Suvaddha High School on 15th January, 2012 for coordinating the project in a remote place of Dhaka. Just like the urban part there were 36 Participants from Suvaddha High School in Keraniganj.

The difference was the 6 selected participants from the urban part coordinated the workshop to help the participants design social project, train in media skill and develop a model of social project. Thus the main framework is based on gathering presentation skills in the workshop and to implement the same skill to help others present ideas the same way i.e. an Urban and Rural Linkage.

Every person in this world has the ability to bring change. We must think of our problem and try to solve it ourselves. Let’s not wait for anybody. Let’s build our country and in order to do that why not start early.

BDST: 1740 HRS, FEB 06, 2012