The Bangladesh 8th National Youth Conference on Family Planning 2023 was organized and hosted by SERAC-Bangladesh on 3rd and 4th October 2023 and focused on young people’s meaningful engagement, exhibiting initiatives connecting the theme for this year of ‘Act. Change. Sustain’ on family planning and well-being, including reproductive and mental health care. The two-days conference incorporated plenaries, concurrent sessions, skill-building workshops, direct conversation with the leaders from the prominent organizations and policy-makers, connecting the international speakers through the hybrid modality that was live-streamed from customized large, medium, and small studio rooms, as well as selfie booths, art therapy, and many other exciting opportunities. The goal of this conference was connecting about 500 youth advocates from every corner of Bangladesh, amplifying effective messages of SRHR and contraception and other in recognition of the FP2030 youth agenda, and attaching SRHR and family planning leaders and allies from around the world to generate demands for youth-centric and participatory agenda/commitments to adopt in the face of the post COVID19 pandemic or any other emergency crisis. To build leadership capacity of youth to foster networking, learning exchange around FP2030 commitments and following up with the ICPD Program of Action (PoA) implementation responding to youth demand with the collaboration of government and non-government programs, focusing on family planning, SRHR and gender-based violence across the country.
100 Projonon Shasthya Bondhu got the opportunity to join this amazing platform that connects youths from diverse backgrounds. One of them, Halimatus Sadia joined as youth speaker in the plenary session by UNFPA and Jhpiego Bangladesh, “Adolescent sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR), gender-based violence, and women’s economic empowerment” where she raised the voice that both SRHR and economic empowerment are crucial for women to make independent decisions about their reproductive health and protect themselves from violence.
Another Projonon Shasthya Bondhu, Basuri Islam being a representative of the young people shared the need of meaningful youth involvement at the closing plenary, by SERAC-Bangladesh “ACTions to Catalyze the CHANGE and SUSTAIN FP/SRH services”. Also, Moshammet Mehenaz Alam Rima, a projonon shasthya bondhu worked as an organizing committee member this year.