CBA10 Youth Conference: Building Bridges

YCBA

Key to building a more resilient future is to break barriers that divide us. Building bridges among people, generation, race and cultures is a stepping stone towards a positive future, and what better bridge than the Youth of our nation and the world’s.  CBA10 completed the youth conference by successfully hosting the 5th youth conference in Dhaka, Bangladesh. This year’s theme concentrated on, Enhancing Urban Community Resilience. The conference was hosted under the joint collaboration ICCCAD, PLAN Bangladesh, Save the Children, WaterAid, Actionaid, BYEI, and NSU.

Climate change is and will always be an important topic; the month of April already recorded one of the highest temperatures around the world and by far the hottest. But talking about our current generation, I think highlighting the adverse effects of climate change is more important than its existing  acknowledgment. One must understand to win a race against climate change; one must start tackling the problems.  Hence adaptation and building resilience is a crucial aspect for our current status quo.

This year’s Youth CBA became a platform for youths to be the agent for change under the theme of urban resilience.  Some of the key aspects covered for the youth were “gender, hygiene, governance, migration, leadership and innovative thinking”
The question raised by the youth was not why but how they are related.  Encouraging them to participate is not only a viable solution but a mandatory one.

"Talking to Apekshya Niraula , I start of the conversation in Bangla, failing to realize she is from Nepal. This phenomenon alone shows that human beings are human beings regardless of race, gender creed and color. The only thing that separates us is our nations and perspective. Apekshya is a human rights activist who believes in building bridges to understand perspectives of different nations. She was mesmerized on how people from Bangladesh are paving the path for development and wants to implement strategies in Nepal, under our picture, hoping to set an exemplary role in building resliance. She quotes “As a youth it is crucial to encourage my generation, to protect my future it is crucial that I learn to protect my present”

Gender: Addressing key aspects of Gender, the points of gender equality was addressed. “Beauty is not only for women but men too” some of the quotes stressed that the derivation that a mindset has created in the current status quo talks about women empowerment only. That wasn’t the case in the sessions. The importance of men’s right as well. It is highly crucial that women and men get the platform to pave the path for equality for a better construction of our SDG goals.

“Breaking barriers and coming out of the box aspect on tackling climate change, both men and women plays a crucial role, hence equality must be recognized” – Ina. F Islam

"Climate games hosted by Pablo Suarez from Red Cross/ Red Crescent Climate Center depicted and gave snippets of the importance “resilience in terms of community based adaptation” He raised the importance of community working together in terms of decision making. Again building bridges among strangers and training individuals to work together was the main agenda of the Climate games. This year’s games concentrated on floods, droughts and cyclones and disaster preparedness." 

 Migration: It’s hard for certain people who live in the comfort of their cities to believe that problems such as climate change exist. As they live in an air cooled bubble, they question themselves that why are there so many people gathering into the cities. What they fail to unde
rstand is that climate change is real and people do suffer from it.

13% of the total population of migrants coming into the cities is Youth and they play a crucial part in contributing to the city’s economy. Starting from the RMG sectors, vendors, rickshaw pullers, and one cannot imagine the contribution they do for our cities growth. But one seldom forgets why they are here at the first place.  Nearly 4 million disasters related displacement has been reported over the period of 2008 to 2013. In the mid-century, half of all Bengalis are likely to be living in the urban centers. Hence it is crucial for the youth of the urban areas to be more aware of problems of over population, displacement and problems such as disease caused by migration so that they are more reliant for the latter. 

“Lars Bernd from Unicef India and Mr.Amin from Plan talked about resilience in schools in India in tackling disaster. Mr. Amin follows that up by stressing the importance of earthquake resilience in school level. He stressed that schools should be well constructed, a committee should be present to overlook the problems and earthquake education should be incorporated in school curriculum."

Hygiene: On hygiene and the importance of water sanitation, the speakers from Wateraid highlighted the problems of urban water sanitation. More than 13% of the public toilets are unclean in Dhaka city and are rendered unusable. What is the youth solution to the problem, “initializing acts are not the only steps towards resilience but incorporating them form a bottom up approach is as important” Cleaning hands before and after meals and before serving are some of the common practices which should be implemented but practices should be done in every household and schools to enhance he practicing ability.

The youth conference sealed the bridge by implementing some important sessions where innovators and professionals contributed ideas and knowledge sharing rounds. The launch of the delta plan and youth completion builds the idea around the give and take relation where youth can contribute to the current problems of the Delta region. A major idea of discussion regarding the plan and its projected fruit in the future was the role of the urban youth to aid in slowly producing tangible yields to the plan. The chair of the session exerted a large amount of emphasis on the participation of youth to identify problems that they face in their daily life in terms of water management and

Conclusion
All in all the youth conference summed up the importance of youth engagement and idea sharing for the youth. It created a platform for youth to engage in ideas of the current status quo and they learned how to incorporate ideas for overall preparedness. The youths left with the promise of building and shaping their stepping stone for the betterment of the future.

Written and compiled by Adnan Qader,
Communications, ICCCAD Youth Programme 

Contribution Samiul Alam, Tasneem Disha, Kh Zannath and Kim Z. Sabir
Facilitators- Youth Communication team