BRAC Disaster Management and Climate Change team, in partnership with Adolescent Development Programme has set up a new milestone this year!

For the first time in Bangladesh, we are going to witness a national level convention this October, consisting of teen representatives from the entire country that aims to create Climate Leaders who will lead their communities during disaster situations. But there is more to it than just this!

Creating Leaders within Leaders!

To ensure quality learning, the team has decided to host a Prep Camp with 40 selected teenagers, all hailing from the Adolescent Development Programme Clubs of the BRAC Education Programme. These 40 teenagers will be exposed to extensive training in leadership and life skills development by Mr. Maruf Khan, an expert in management and leadership trainings. The participants of the Prep Camp will be facilitating the main event in October.

Putting “How” Ahead of “What”

As I am writing, the Prep Camp is already going on in Uttara BLC with sessions designed exclusively targeted towards the adolescents, recognising their education and socio-economic backgrounds, since most of them are from underprivileged areas of the country. The session designs have passed through multiple layers of scrutiniy, starting from the external consultant, to the DMCC team, ADP team, Social Innovation Lab team and have been greeted with enthusiasm from the participants, as we can conclude from their reflection forms!

The participants were given the time to get comfortable with the training set up and other participants on the Day 0, that was scheduled just on the day before the camp starts.

The sessions made sure to provide the participants plenty of avenues for icebreaking and bon
ding. The priority was to create knowledge with the participation of the trainees than feeding them content heavy presentations. Games, group activities, cultural programmes were designed carefully to maximise their learning and energy levels!

What’s in it for you?

Get your target right!

By right we mean the audience that is in the best position to ‘Lead Change’. There is no better resource to tap into than the youth! DMCC was really successful in doing that.

Leave no stones unturned!

No matter how big of an expert you are, there will always be things that your eyes miss out on! It is always modest and smart to get a third party view just to make sure you have left no stones unturned. There are teams who do not think it is important to involve external eyes, often for the risk of losing control and credit. Gone are those days in the world and too in BRAC.  DMCC has been really upfront in ensuring diverse inputs from external parties, and hired a consultant who is an expert in such trainings instead of keeping it all locked in to themselves!

Look for resources within! 

DMCC utilised the existing resources of the ADP clubs. Instead of aiming for random audience, this way the team got the chance to ensure quality participation at the Prep Camp.

Watch how Shuvo (Rajshahi) felt when the trainer just ended his session on life skills!

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Masrura Oishi

Masrura Oishi is an over-thinker and procaffeinator. In her free time, she pretends to be a philosopher and does some development work for BRAC Social Innovation Lab. She invests her insulin pumped energy into reading, writing, traveling and living!