December 15, 2012

Youth Tech Drive, a TechCamp Follow-up Project

Youth Tech Drive was a follow-up project of Youth TechCamp 2012, Bangladesh. It was successfully organized by YES Alumni Bangladesh. The project held from 13th to 15th December 2012.
First day of Youth Tech Drive began with the session where the previous YES graduates and currently YES alumni, Imran Jahan Digonto, Scionara Shehry, Shomy Chowdhury, Sakib Noor Billah, and Rubaiath Hossain, introduced YES program to the participants. The trainers also told how to apply for this scholarship and the criteria that they have to consider. The students were very eager to know about the program. The second session of the day “Class 1: Computer and Internet Basics” was run by Scionara Shehry, Mohima Srishty, and Imran Jahan Digonto. The students were very responsive when asked questions, and a lot of them could answer correctly. The trainers made the session fun and interesting for the students. After that, the participants got the chance to socialize and know each other in this ice-breaking session as they all a little snack. Rubaiath Hossain, Mohima Srishty, Munif Khan helped the students to have a fun time with games as they are starting to enjoy this wonderful opportunity to learn about technology and internet. Participants made colorful wishes and greetings for the K-L YES program for 10th year anniversary. Bright and dazzling cards that were drawn by the participants were mind-blowing. Some of the trainers made a poster wishing YES Program a happy 10th anniversary. They took photos along with the YES alumni at the end of the day. The motto of the coordinators was to celebrate the 10th anniversary of YES Program by organizing this project with YES Alumni. Participants were divided into four groups to have ideas about making website, getting to know basic rules. Gulshan Jubaed Prince went ahead to let the students know about two ways of making websites by using soft-codes and ready to make websites. The team leaders, Munif, Scionara, Rubaiath, and Digonto, held an interactive website making session and helped the participants go through the steps to create, register with a sub-domain. The teams came up with their newly created websites with the knowledge gathered all by themselves. After the students came up with their own websites, they were given instructions for the next day. By the end of Day 1, students were free and interactive with each other, and learned and enjoyed team work and leadership, even if it was within a range from grade 7 to 12.
On the second day participants took a quiz about the knowledge that they learnt on the previous day and also gave their responded on their experience that they gathered by the presentations and works. Experienced trainers Rafita Binta Alam and Chowdhury Amir Abdullah led this session to let the participants have knowledge about Model United Nations. They presented and told how Model United Nations works, and some terms to know about it, how the flow of debate, discussion goes on in a Model United Nations conference. The session ended as the participants got a new-fangled experience in this presentation. Rafita Binta Alam, and Sakib Noor Billah trained in the next session, “Class 4: How to campaign an idea using social media”, which would introduce social networking sites to the participants, began as the trainers gave some knowledge about websites which we can use for social networking such as ‘Ibibo’, ‘Google +’, ‘Linked In’, ‘Twitter’, ‘Facebook’. Rafita Binta Alam radiantly presented in this session.


Sakib Noor Billah, skilled YES alumni, then went on to describe how to run a campaign using social networking sites; expertise and skills to run campaign successfully through Facebook page. Participants got the chance to socialize and know each other in this ice-breaking session. This session provided the students to enjoy this wonderful opportunity to learn about model United Nations while socializing as they were having snacks.Next, the participants were shown a video that was highly enthusiastic and informative about using social networking sites to do business campaign. Although it talks slightly off-topic, it was good enough to let the participants have some extra knowledge about what they are about to do next.It was fun and interesting as the participants showed great enthusiasm in their work. Day three was the final day of the whole workshop which took place at the Edward M Kennedy Centre, Dhanmondi-27, Dhaka. 
Both the coordinators and most of the trainers got to the venue around 9 am and started preparing for the day. All of the participants for the workshop were present at the venue by 10 am. 16 participants, who were already divided into two different groups on the second day of the workshop, received an hour to prepare themselves to work on their presentations about “Computer Basics”, “Creating a Webpage”, “Model United Nations”, and “Campaigning through social network media” that they had made in the first two days of the workshop. All the students were done in time, and the “Presentation Session” took place. All the participant presenters did an excellent job with their presentations, discussing about most of the topics that were covered in the past two days in their own words. The “Certificate Giving Ceremony” took place right after then. One of the two country co-coordinators of iEARN-BD, Wasi Mahmud Moni, handed out the certificates to all the participants. We had another special guest with us, Ms. Nadi, our TechCamp trainer for the group “Campaigning through social media”. And thus, Youth Tech Drive officially came to an end; but we weren’t completely done yet, we had a little ending ceremony. We had baked a cake to celebrate the 10th year anniversary of the YES Program, and dedicated “Youth Tech Drive” as a sign of appreciation to the YES Family. The whole workshop has been a huge success, with great feedback.