In 6th June 2022, Urban Youth Council Guideline Draft Workshop with Rajshahi City Corporation Official member and taskforce member was held at an auditorium in Rajshahi.
Bangladesh’s National development policies have clearly indicated skill building, employment generation, and meaningful participation of youths which is accelerating their local level engagement process. To support them to receive basic services equitably, empowering young people is key. SERAC-Bangladesh with the support from UN Democracy Fund and UN-Habitat is initiating urban youth councils at four city corporations of the country, namely Rajshahi, Rangpur, Mymensingh, and Narayanganj under the Advancing Engagement by Setting Up Urban Youth Councils in Bangladesh project.
In this meeting, this joint meeting with the Rajshahi City Corporation (RCC) was moderated by SERAC-Bangladesh’s Assistant Director (Program) Md. Salim Miah, Chief Clean Officer Sheikh Md. Mamun of RCC, Reserved seats-2 ward councilor Most. Ayesha Khatun, Social Worker Md. Waliur Rahman Babu, Reserved seats-06 ward councilor Most. Mazeda Begum, Senior Journalist Md. Ahmed Shoriuddin, SM Shaikat, Executive Director of SERAC-Bangladesh, all are present as a guest.
S M Shaikat the Executive Director of SERAC-Bangladesh mentioned, that this project will enhance the capacity of civic engagement among the youths of this city, and engage them with a participatory democratic and electoral process, where they will nominate and elect their own representatives to take their issues to the city corporation and formal spaces and the next four years, they (the task force members) are given instructions on how they will function and what responsibilities they will have, and how they will work with city mayors. The combination of all these will create and formulate the policy in question in collaboration with the task force. The city youth council will also advise the mayor regarding meaningful youth presence in the planning, implementation, and monitoring of development activities in the city. Which will support the government achieve SDGs 11, and 16 at the local level.
They also stated some of the key activities under this project will include youth council guideline preparation, formation of the urban youth council, voter list preparation, and electing 20 youth councilors from the registered youth voters of the age of 18-35 in the city. The proposed urban youth council will connect with the Bangladesh Urban Youth Councils Network, and the World Urban Youth Councils Network and build partnerships to improve the capacity of the local youths.
Officials of the RCC attended the meeting and expressed their fullest support and cooperation towards the project implementation. Also present in the program were Associate Program Officer Md. Nahidur Rahman, Associate Program Officer Md Shofiullah, Md. Shahadat Hossain Shahin, Program Associate of SERAC-Bangladesh, Rajshahi Divisional Coordinator Md.Mahmudul Hasan Shishir and members of the Task Force.
