Government and non-government actors should not impose solutions for youth, without an empathetic understanding of their problems. With this in mind, IID’s Policy Camp 2019 focused on empathetic understanding of youth’s unemployment situation to enable youth leaders to co-create empathetic solutions.
To reap the benefits of demographic dividend, IID, under its Youth for Policy initiative, trains local youth leaders on public policy advocacy and policy entrepreneurship. This year’s Policy Camp incorporated wide range of tools and techniques of ‘Design Thinking’ to find empathetic solution for job seeker, particularly for the aspirant labour migrants.
Policy Camp is a 5 day residential policy training program that aims to teach youth how to get involved in public policy. This year IID organized 2 Policy Camp in Sylhet and Jashore district. The workshop in Sylhet was held from 25th to 29th August 2019. 28 youths from 10 different districts participated in the workshop.
Providing different interactive and theoretical tools, participants were trained to come up with unique solutions for the migrants who face fraudulence in every steps of the migration process both in Bangladesh and the destination country. To do so, first they were taught to inquire and gather knowledge about the difficulties migrants face, keeping an empathetic attitude. As part of this investigation; participants did literature review and also visited Government Technical Training Center of Sylhet district, where they took in-depth interviews of aspirant and returnee migrants who were taking pre-departure training.
More photos of Policy Camp’19 Sylhet Chapter
With the findings from the field, participants then developed a point of view of the issue based on the needs of the migrants. This helped to focus and be specific while finding solutions. In the next step, working in groups, participant did brainstorming to ideate possible unique solution of the defined problem. They learned how to use mind map while ideating for a specific policy formulation. Then they prepared a one-pager where each group presented the prototype of their unique solutions to address issues of migration in pre, during and post migration stage.
At the final stage, with review and feedbacks from the facilitators, teams presented their idea to the honourable MP Md. Rezaul Karim Bablu (Bogura-7), who was present at the ‘Hello MP’ event on 29th August 2019. The workshop ended by distributing certificates and concluding remarks of the honourable MP. With other facilitators, IID’s CEO, Syeed Ahamed facilitated the key sessions of the residential workshop.
Learnings from the Policy Camp will further help these youth leaders to create and advocate for the empathetic solutions of the public policy issues.
