A youth conference has been conducted at Dhonjoil school ground in Noagoan on 29 July 2018. The major objective of the youth conference was to unite youths and empower them as social change agent for dalit and plainland adibashi community to have empowered and dignified life. For having the programme dalit and adibashi youths could internalize their rights as human being and been able to understand where should they claim their rights and how their access to the government and other services will be ensured. As well, policy makers and government officials were also sensitized to extend their utmost cooperation for the dalit and adibashi youths and also for their community.
In every project supported by HEKS/EPER, there are community based organization called Village Development Committee (VDC), Plain land adibashi and Dalits are the member of these groups. Under these group there are sub groups named Kishore-Kishori Dal (Youth groups). Youths for this conference were selected from these groups.
In the conference the youths have presented 8 specific problems of their community; such as- early marriage, education and drop out, dowry, drug addiction, lack of opportunities for vocational training and skill development, health and hygiene issues; specially their need for sanitary latrine, safe water etc. Some of the stalls have been made for packaging their thoughts and ideas to have attention of the promoted issues by their own hand made products.
The total conference was divided into two parts. In the inaugural part; they mainly focused on their identified problems and shared a declaration. In the second session a charity female football match was held followed by a beautiful cultural programme organized and participated by Dalit and adibashi youths. The conference was inaugurated by the chief guest Alhaj Md. Solim Uddin Tarafdar Selim, Member of the Parliament (MP), Noagoan-3, and in the second session the chief guest was Md. Iqbal Hossain, Superintendent of Police (SP), Noagoan. Many districts and upazila level government and non-government high officials were also participated in the occasion. The honorable MP has given his firm commitment to support the dalit adibashi youths & community and has given direction at once, to the several departments officials to act on the shared problems immediately where possible.
The youth conference was organized by Association for Rural Cooperation (ARCO) under Dalit and Adibashi Rights, Empowerment and Access towards Mainstream (DREAM) project. ARCO is one of the core partner of HEKS/EPER working since 2009.
