Young Minds, Incredible Ideas

The current age has already marked itself as the age of digitalisation. With the help of modern technology that has enabled global connectivity and easy availability of information, the youth of today have taken great steps towards making a positive impact across the communities they belong to. Initiatives like Facebook, Snapchat, PayPal, and others are results of youth mixing digital technology and innovation to build a product or service that could make the world a better place to live in through harnessed connectivity.

Unfortunately, there are thousands, who, despite their bright ideas and skills, often fail to move forward because of an absence of proper platform. Telenor recognised this gap three years ago and has been organising the Telenor Youth Forum across all its markets to encourage young leaders with innovative zeal and leadership potential to present and build on their ideas with the proper guidance, mentorship and resources.

This year, under the theme "Digitalization for Peace", the Telenor Youth Forum 2016 (TYF 2016) began its hunt for young leaders with innovative ideas and strong voices to lead the transformation in the world. The Bangladesh chapter of TYF 2016 wrapped up on September 21 through its grand finale and identified two such leaders to represent Bangladesh on the global level.

Witnessing the youth's spontaneous participation and unceasing enthusiasm to explore beyond boundaries makes one very optimistic about the future of our world. The grand finale saw Ramim Ahmed and Rafsan Sabab Khan being selected as TYF delegates from Bangladesh. 

Although these two individuals were selected from Bangladesh, TYF 2016 hosted a wide selection of extraordinary minds with potentially ground-breaking ideas. The ideas presented at the grand finale event were as follows:

One Young World: One Young World is an outreach network to virtually connect like-minded isolated youths from around the world through meaningful engagements on an online platform. It will bridge geographical and socio-cultural gaps between the global youth, and give them an effective channel for connectivity. The initiative, which won Rafsan Sabab Khan the competition, stemmed from a will to connect with the youth globally, so that they can encourage and enable each other to exercise positive activities, ultimately facilitating the development of
a productive pool of global citizens.

Rafsan is currently studying at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Dhaka University, and aims to continue developing the platform besides continuing his academic pursuits.

We Are 1: It is a crowd-funding platform to connect communities across the world and to unite them for a cause to help the underprivileged or distressed population of the world. Ramim Ahmed, the other winner, initiated this project with an aspiration to empower people globally by connecting those in need of help and those willing to help. Also a student of IBA, Ramim will represent Bangladesh in Oslo alongside Rafsan.

Re Fu Zang: Myat Moe Khaing, who hails from Rangamati and is currently studying at IBA, cherishes a dream to save the dying indigenous languages of the Chittagong Hill Tracts through using digital media. Determined to transform the dream into a reality, she started working on Re Fu Zang, which is an online platform hosting audio books and story books in the dying indigenous languages that would capture the community's history and folklore and would be accessible by anyone with a digital device. Re Fu Zang could be expanded to incorporate other global indigenous languages dying due to the dwindling number of speakers.

E-safe: It is a service with the power to help its users in times of emergency. This service will connect volunteers living in different parts of the world, and send the nearest volunteer, based on their response time, to accidents sites or people in need of emergency care. Md. Samid Razzak, who conceived the idea, explained that the service would also work offline enabling its users to call for help through push messages with the app. Samid, a student of North South University and an aspiring innovator, had been working with new ideas in different competitions for a while now. He appreciates the platform provided by TYF where he got the opportunity to not only present his ideas, but also to network with other brilliant minds.

Youth Net: Through Youth Net, Nushrat Farzana aims to cater to the needs of the youth, especially those in their formative years, by providing them free counselling sessions and opening up opportunities through proactively engaging them in community services. It will be an online platform manned by well-trained youth advocates. Nushrat is currently studying at IBA.

Porua: A brainchild of Farhan Fuad Orzin, a student of Bangladesh University of Professionals, Porua is an online book donation system which will allow people to donate their books through drop-off points. Donated books will be used in school libraries across the country to enlighten the youth.

Right now, only 4,500 out of 120,000 schools in Bangladesh have libraries. Through Porua, Orzin aims to address this crisis and help build a well-informed nation through the contributions of booklovers.

Nurse Joy: Sabrina Rahman's Nurse Joy is an online platform that works for mental wellness of the youths. The site will make distinction between mental disorders based on personality traits, and will advocate social and cultural support as well as offering available information about their treatment. Sabrina's willpower to make this plan a reality besides continuing her academic pursuits at IBA has been further strengthened by the recognition she received at TYF 2016.

TYF 2016 is no less than a testimony of the enormous riches of brilliance among the youth in Bangladesh. The ideas generated by future leaders at Telenor Youth Forum all lend hope to a better future.