Global Handwashing Day Project

On the 15th and 16th of October 2012 around 35 YES alumni have participated in the Global Hand Washing Day. Yes alumni had joined hands with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to undertake a project that would create awareness about washing hands in the proper way among the school children and vendors of Dhaka city.

Around 7 schools and many vendors on the streets around the schools have been reached. Yes Alumnus has created a presentation and a video on hand washing, both of which were shown in the schools. The presentations were shown to around 1800 hundred students and around 20-30 vendors have received knowledge about the effects of not washing hands. There was a grand rally for the awareness of washing hands where around 800 students participated. Sufficient awareness has been created around Dhaka city about personal hygiene.
All in all, the entire project was a grand success!

YES Alumni with BYES

YES Alumni Bangladesh had been invited on the 15th of October to EMK Center to a program organized by the Bangladesh Youth Empowerment Society to present and promote Youth Exchange and Study program. It was program where all the exchange student programs funded by the U.S Department of State are presented and promoted. 

Three YES Alumni ( Sadman Mondalib, Farazi Ghani and Suravi Jahanara) had gone to EMK center on behalf on YES and iEARN-BD to promote the program. Even though the target audience for YES program was not present, as all of the audiences were from undergraduate background, it was a good opportunity for YES promotion and hopefully the word will spread around through the audience present at the program. 

As a whole it was a good day to spread around the word for YES since the promotion for the upcoming YES year has already started!

AEBA Convention

There was a press conference at the National Press Club on 14th October,organised by All European Bangladesh Association (AEBA), a newly floated forum of Bangladeshi expatriates in Europe. Expatriates representing eight European countries attended the press conference. One of our YES alumni,Sadman Mondalib got an opportunity to attend this press conference.All European Bangladesh Association (AEBA) will arrange a two-day grand convention in December 1-2 in Athens, the capital of Greece where Bangladesh origin community leaders from 30 countries in the Europe will take part.Mainly,the convention will focus on continuing the united efforts of Bangladeshi expatriates for development of their respective communities and extending their contribution for development of Bangladesh. AEBA members informed that during the grand convention on December 1-2 in Athens, they would award 16 Bangladeshi origin celebrities in seven categories in recognition of their excellence.

YES Alumni in Human Development Workshop

On the 12th of October two YES Alumnus (Farazi Ghani and Sadman Mondalib) went to Sylhet to help work on a project called "Increasing Democratic Attitude in Underdeveloped High School Students." It was a two day workshop where all the invited Master trainers including some senior Master trainers who have worked with the project coordinator Ms. Badrunnesha before had worked together to create the materials needed to get the project going. This was a very new thing and a very new idea that has been brought by Ms. Badrunnesha and it was a brilliant project to work at. The whole concept of creating materials and sessions for teachers to train the students with was a very challenging and equally enjoyable experience.

The two days were very intense as almost everybody that worked together on the project were not familiar with each other. They had to debate on several topics to come to a conclusion and had to create full sessions with all the details and material necessary for each session. It was even more challenging since the sessions were being created for students of Madraasas and issues relating religion and social norms had to be dealt with carefully. On the second day the sessions and materials had to be finalized and each group had to do a presentation on the things they worked at.

All in all it was a great success and the two YES Alumnus had been highly appreciated for their help in the project!

A conversation with Bangladesh

Building on the platform of the “Town interview with Bangladeshi Youth” of Secretary of state Hillary Clinton, in partnership with Desh TV, US Embassy Dhaka is producing a monthly program entitled “A conversation with Bangladesh”.
YES Alumni joined this talk show, where two of the American guest from Embassy, Joanna Schenke and Raj Sriram were invited. This month’s topic was “US Election and Democracy”. Four of the alumni joined as the panelists, representing the Bangladeshi youth. Sabir Amanullah, American Center staff member and TV personality, hosted the program. Mike Harker, cultural affairs officer at American center worked as the site officer in that show.
Sabir and the guests raised, talked and shared their opinion on the topic; also sharing their views and thoughts with the panelists. The show went ahead discussing about the election process in the US; election and democracy in root levels and in youth; purpose of the presidential debate; transparent fair and free election; young Americans attitude towards election. YES alumni shared their thoughts about young Bangladeshi’s attitude, views about election.
The show came to an end with the significance to build mutual relationships, both the US and Bangladesh can share their views towards democracy.

YES Alumni and FAO

On the 3rd of October a team of 9 Yes Alumnus went to the National Institute of Public Health to attend a meeting with the Food and Agriculture (FAO) Department to discuss a project for the "Global Hand Washing Day". In the meeting the YES Alumnus had to do a presentation on the YES alumni activities to give FAO a clear idea of how YES Alumnus operates and how we can work with them to make the project a successful and an effective one.
After the presentation by YES alumnus the project coordinator Mr. Dharmapuri had given a presentation on how FAO works. After a common ground was set, it was decided that YES Alumni and FAO would join hands and YES alumnus would go around schools in Dhaka creating awareness and doing presentations about Hand washing to celebrate Global Handwashing day.
All in all the meeting was a successful one and it’s a huge opportunity for YES alumnus to work with big organizations such as FAO.