Second Youth Leadership Summit ends successfully

BYLC hosted its second Youth Leadership Summit from April 26-28, 2012 at the Bangabandhu International Conference Center in Dhaka. 450 delegates were competitively selected from over 2100 applications from private and public educational institutions in Barisal, Chittagong, Dhaka, Khulna, Rajshahi, Rangpur and Sylhet.

The Summit featured 50 distinguished national and international speakers in a mix of plenaries and concurrent panels on global citizenship, entrepreneurship, climate change and renewable energy, good governance, social media, women and leadership, technology and innovation, agriculture, social impact markets and national economy.

The leadership plenaries, interspersed with teambuilding activities and reflection sessions, were led by Dr. Max Klau, Director of Leadership Development at City Year, and Dr. Joe Hsueh, Systems Dynamics Modeler at MIT Sloan School of Management.

The Summit concluded with a gala dinner at the Bashundhara Convention Center, with Marty Linsky, Harvard Professor and Principal of Cambridge Leadership Associates, as the keynote speaker. Foreign Secretary Mijarul Quayes, U.S. Ambassador Dan Mozena and BYLC Chairperson Manzoor Hasan delivered special remarks at the program.

Marty Linsky, Harvard Professor and Principal of Cambridge Leadership Associates, speaks at the Closing Ceremony of BYLC Youth Leadership Summit 2012 on April 28, 2012.

Steering Bangladesh in the Right Direction: A report based on Youth Leadership Summit 2011 launched

BYLC launched its first youth perception report, Steering Bangladesh in the Right Direction: A report based on BYLC Youth Leadership Summit 2011, at the Inaugural Ceremony of the Youth Leadership Summit 2012. Working closely with the World Bank and pi Strategy Consulting, BYLC brought out the report, which is a summary of the results of the survey undertaken among the delegates at the Youth Leadership Summit 2011. It is intended to act as a stimulus for policy-makers and researchers as well as youth organizations, on how young people can contribute to different sectors of society.

Read the online version here

Participants of BBLT 6, BBLT 7 and BBLT 8 graduate

A total of 115 participants from three BBLT programs received their certificates at the Closing Ceremony of the Youth Leadership Summit 2012 on April 28, 2012. Dan Mozena, U.S. Ambassador to Bangladesh, presented the certificates to the graduates. In his remarks to the graduates, Ambassador Mozena said that active and responsible leadership from the young generation can help Bangladesh emerge as a middle-income country in the near future.

Watch a short documentary on BBLT 7 and BBLT 8 here

BBLT-J 4 participants complete their month-long leadership training

BYLC launched its fourth Building Bridges through Leadership Training Junior (BBLT-J) program with an Inaugural Ceremony at BRAC Center Inn in Dhaka on June 28, 2012 with Musa Ibrahim, first Bangladeshi to reach the summit of Mount Everest, as special guest. 41 participants were competitively selected from 303 applications from 68 schools and madrassas in Dhaka for the month-long program.

The program was taught by leadership facilitators who were selected from the best performing BBLT graduates. Following three weeks of training on communication, ethics, teamwork and leadership, the BBLT-J participants had an opportunity to translate their classroom learning into meaningful action by organizing health and sanitation awareness campaigns at the Jhilpar slum in Dhaka.

Spotlight:
Jahedul Islam, BBLT 2 graduate and Lead Instructor of the BBLT-J 4 program

Jahedul Islam is currently a first year undergraduate student in dentistry at the University Dental College and Hospital. He graduated from BBLT 2 and has been working with BYLC since 2009. Most recently, he served as the Lead Instructor of the BBLT-J 4 program.

You have been involved with several projects at BYLC since your graduation. What motivated you to continue working at BYLC?

I started working with BYLC after completing the BBLT 2 program in 2009 because I wanted to learn more about leadership. I also wanted to work with those younger than me so that I could ignite in them the passion I had for exercising leadership to solve real-world problems. Therefore, I worked as a facilitator for BBLT-J 1, project coordinator for BBLT-J 2 and leadership instructor for BBLT-J 3. I also worked with students my age in BBLT 6 and BBLT 8 as a facilitator. At BYLC, you can directly see the impact of your work when BBLT or BBLT-J participants translate their classroom learning into meaningful action in the community, and this is what inspires me to work here.

What are the challenges of becoming a leadership instructor?

Leadership is not something you can learn straight out of a textbook, it's not scripted. Since secondary school students are accustomed to textbook based learning, it's difficult for them to grasp this concept, and it's even more difficult for the instructor and facilitators to create an environment where students are willing to share their experiences and learn from each other, and not just from the authority figure.

I think the most challenging task for any instructor is finding the right balance between challenge and support to maximize learning. If you challenge the group too much then they will be overwhelmed and learning will not take place. On the other hand, if they are not challenged at all then they will not come out of their comfort zone and learn new ways of exercising leadership. For long, we have been taught to perceive leadership as a position of power or authority. But power is only a tool, not the objective. We teach leadership as an activity or a process that anyone can participate in. It's challenging to bring this shift in the mindset of participants because people are generally resistant to change.

How have your experiences in teaching leadership made you the person that you are today?

Teaching leadership is a two-way experience. I get to learn from the participants and the facilitators as much as I share my own understanding with them. This experience has also improved my capacity to work with people from diverse educational and socio-economic backgrounds. The most useful lesson for me, however, has been the capacity to stomach failure while exercising leadership. Because of the experiential nature of our training, I always have to improvise in front of the class. You don't innovate unless you take risks and run experiments. I feel that my teaching experience at BYLC has made me more courageous in running experiments in my own life as well.