SM Shaikat was speaking at a session on Harnessing Urban Youth to Transform our Urban Communities with the moderation of Bitania Lulu, and speakers included Qahtan Hadi Hussein, Frank D’hondt, Caroline Moser, Bikram Keshari Pattanaik, Annesha Mukherjee, Luis Fuentes Arce, Cherie Enns, Azizur Rahman Siddiqui, S. M. Shaikat, Sandhya Venkateswaran, & James Pasternak.

In his speech, Shaikat highlighted the current barriers for youth to achieve their full potential in urban societies and approaches for youth to overcome these challenges. He focused on SERAC’s initiative of Urban Economy Forum funded by the UNDEF, and technically supported by UN-Habitat in Bangladesh.

He quoted- Young people are no longer the theoretical beings, or ‘some audiences’ in the crowd. They are leading all the economies towards a sustainable future, not being tokens, but agents of change. SERAC-Bangladesh is improving young people’s capacities to cope up with the new normal, giving them voices to join policy and decision making spaces through elected councils, and other mechanisms. We believe it is a duty of all to ensure that youth are supported to fight their depressions, in the rise of pandemic, they receive fitting skills through vocational and technical education that the cities could facilitate meaningfully than any other habitats.