SERAC-Bangladesh and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Bangladesh annually organize the Bangladesh National Youth Conference on Family Planning (BNYCFP). This conference is the largest youth focused annual event on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) in the country. SERAC-Bangladesh is a youth-led and youth-focused organization. The conference brings together Ministers and high-level officials, representatives from the UN and international organizations, Family Planning and health experts and youth leaders from around Bangladesh. Pranab Rajbhandari interviewed SM Shaikat and Nusrat Sharmin to discover the history and uncover the impact of BNYCFP.

Introductions

Pranab Rajbhandari-Knowledge SUCCESS (PR): Can you please introduce yourself and your roles in SERAC Bangladesh?

SM Shaikat-SERAC Bangladesh-Executive Director (SK): I have been the executive director of SERAC Bangladesh since 2009. I started as a volunteer in 2003 and have been with SERAC for almost 21 years. I joined through one of the education support programs. My interest in community development and social programming led to my involvement in the organization.

Nusrat Sharmin-SERAC Bangladesh-Senior Program Officer (NS):  I am a senior program officer at SERAC. I started as a volunteer after participating in the second Bangladesh National Youth Conference on Family Planning. I volunteered with SERAC for quite a long time, interned here after which I got the opportunity to join SERAC as a staff member. It is my great opportunity and honor to be one of the organizers of BNYCFP for the past six years.

Background, History, Challenges

PR: Can you please describe SERAC and how it functions? What is the BNYCFP and how did it come about?

SK: Thanks so much for giving us the opportunity to speak about our initiatives and organization. In the past three decades, starting in 1993, SERAC has been transformed into a youth focused agency to serve and involve young people in designing, developing, and implementing its programs. More and more of our programs and projects over the past decade have included health including family planning and health system strengthening. Currently, SERAC has four offices across the country…. “[and] local staffers, volunteers and interns who work in those regional hubs across eight divisions. [We] cover the whole country geographically and we also have an active list of 15,000 plus young volunteers by the end of 2023.

We initiated the BNYCFP back in 2016. Overall, the objective was to advance youth voices in health policies and programming, which is one major area of SERAC’s work. We also work on multiple other layers, including democratic empowerment of young people, skills building, nutrition, and especially education.

PR: Can you please describe SERAC’s role in the BNYCFP? How did this annual conference start?

SK: The March 2015 International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) in Bali, Indonesia was delayed due to a volcanic eruption there. The youth delegates from across the world were asked if they had any aspirations being part of the ICFP conference. There I committed to initiate a similar kind of a conference in Bangladesh.

We hosted the first National Youth Conference the same year on September 6th, 2016. We didn’t have funding or resources. None of the organizations working on family planning in the country thought about hosting a national youth conference like this. I reached out to many local organizations and international non-government organizations (NGOs). No one objected but there was almost no interest. Everyone was concerned about funding as no one had this in their budget or in their annual plan. We reached out to a colleague – Dr. Faisal, then the Country Director, at Engender Health. He was the only person who supported me, thought it was a wild idea but told me to go ahead and that Engender Health most probably would support us with some logistics.

I reached out to the government agencies, especially the Director General – Family Planning (DGFP). They had never heard of this kind of an event but the Director General (DG) at that time was a very progressive person. He was interested in being involved as this would be a youth-led and youth focused event. This also encouraged us to reach many other stakeholders.

It became quite an event although we did not have sufficient resources or funding. UNFPA was invited to join but didn’t fund the conference in the beginning. Their participation in the first BNYCFP did give them an eye opener though. The conference was such a popular event when we started, and it has continued to be popular each year since. We did not stop even during COVID though we used a hybrid model then during 2021 and 2022 with participants joining us online. The government, the DGFD, the ministers and others, now considers this annual conference as one of their official events.

We started from scratch with an idea. You must have a vision. When we designed the first conference, we titled it as the Bangladesh First National Youth Conference. Everyone asked me whether I had a plan to do a second conference. We said we don’t know, but we have a vision that this conference will go on. Some people asked me when the second conference would be hosted. I still said we don’t know but probably soon.

We received support from UNFPA and from a few other partner organizations for the second conference. That gave us more hope and we organized the second conference in 2017. The BNYCFP has had two key things in common: UNFPA has allocated an annual budget for the event every year since 2017 and is the most consistent supporter/partner. The government takes it as their own event. The DG of the family planning department chairs the opening plenary of the conference.

A commitment made turned into a reality, and now has become everyone’s event. It is one of the most popular and supported events in the country on family planning and youth.

Organizing and Implementing the Conference

PR: How is the conference organized? What are its objectives?

SK: There are a lot of rigorous communication metrics working together. We need a big team to perform things together. It takes six to eight months of preparation. Many SERAC staff are directly involved in planning and supporting the event. But we do want to ensure diversity in planning, diversity in organizing the events to reflect the diverse flavor of the topics, the issues, and the discussions. Every year, the organizing team includes young people based on their active presence in the field, based on their performances, and based on their significant creative ideas. All of them are volunteers. They come onboard with their ideas to contribute to the planning. They themselves design the plans for the event, how the gate will look, how the stage will look, who the speakers should be. Thirty young people sit on the board, the organizing committee every year. They decide on the speakers and what kind of technical sessions to hold and why.

The staff are involved, expending time organizing, working through volunteers. We don’t want to overburden our staff with conference duties, but they do a lot and make it possible. Apart from all these duties, we do have other work too, other projects. So, it is six months of work with a voluntary time contribution too. A contribution for the youth community support to help them raise their voices.

If a partner organization wants to present, then the secretariat, on behalf of the organizing team, communicates with them. There is advocacy going on by many organizations. For example, Marie Stopes was advocating to present a hard-to-reach family planning policy in front of the DGFP and ministry officials. Plan International had their own adolescent program where they wanted to showcase the outcome of the project and involve more young people. Partners appreciate this opportunity.

The idea behind the whole event is to bring the youth voice up front for family planning and reproductive health, giving them the voice that is missing in the traditional planning and designing of the government’s policy and programming. It is to educate the policymakers who do take away a lot of messages. So, when they are sitting at their desk, with the plans and metrics, they can put this information and input to design a better policy and better programs.

PR: You engage 30 young people to be on the board, to select the speakers, to plan sessions. You also have 15,000 volunteers in your network across the country. How do you involve and engage youth in the conference process?

SK: We have several ways of engaging youth in the process:

• Thirty young people are selected to be part of the team that decides on the technical issues and other decisions about the conference. We circulate an open application and interest form across our volunteers. It is very competitive. We strategically select them based on multiple indicators: inclusivity, diversity so that everyone has a stake in planning. For example, the person’s disability, those from distant towns also get priorities. We accommodate people from different cultural and social backgrounds. Some members of the organizing committee from the previous year are also included to help the new young volunteer representatives who have never experienced organizing such a big event.

• A balance of newcomers and experienced members provide mentorship support within the organizing team. Otherwise, it creates huge pressure for the SERAC staff team who are already busy managing other preparatory work. The new members bring in new perspectives and help with creative ideas. Planning takes a month or so. We keep focused on the planning while the participant applications are open. During this time, planning the conference is a priority.

• Including at least one youth speaker on all panels is mandatory. It is a minimum requirement while there can be many more youth speakers. There are also panels where only young people are speaking. So, it is the power of youth voices. They are sitting and sharing the floor with the ministers, director generals, government officials and high-level folks. This works as an eye opener for the policymakers when they go back to their offices after the conference.

By the end of March, we organize an in-person onboarding meeting of the organizing committee. The teams are then divided into technical, scientific, secretariat, logistics, communication teams. All teams then take on their roles, design their activities, develop their work plan, and come together in one template to create the work plan of the conference. Then the teams keep working themselves in smaller groups virtually and sometimes in person. They use our office spaces and meeting venues whenever they need it. They receive support from the secretariat. It is mostly a hybrid version of work throughout the period of six months.  The whole team probably sits together twice during this period, once at the beginning to start planning and then before the conference.

NS: We have an open call for (youth) participants for two months starting in March through the launch of a Google form where we require the basic information from participants. We also ask questions to evaluate their interest in the conference: their background and how they will use this conference in their next activities in life or career. Technical and secretariat team meetings are organized twice a week to jointly evaluate all applications. 500 participants are selected.  All participants cannot be accommodated at the venue due to seating capacity limits, so some participate online. There are about 200-300 people in the venue but there are more outside online. There were internet challenges the year before, so we did not take virtual participants in 2023. But in 2024, we are addressing the challenges, planning to have a larger event with more than 500 participants, with virtual participation included.

PR: Are there any challenges?

SK:  Yes, we still struggle for funding and resource allocation. The event is funding dependent. We do not rely on young people’s subscription because it is mostly a free event for them. We rely on the development partners and everyone else. But the good thing is that everyone knows this conference works with partners who have attended (joined) the event calling us to keep their slot booked for the next year.

Impact

PR: Does the conference have an impact? 

SK: Of course, it keeps the conversation going beyond the two days. It works as advocacy for youth voices. The national family planning strategy 2023-30 is being prepared for the 1st time in the country. The Ministry leads the strategy development. We have been invited to be part of the national strategy steering committee, just because they (the Ministry) were part of the event (BNYCFP). The additional secretary was at the 2023 conference and was a speaker. She personally recommended us to be part of the steering committee because this conference gave her a lot of good insights and they wanted to continue the discussion on the national strategy. The conference supports the government and the national program. It is not a siloed event, but helps continue the dialogue every year, follows up on advocacy and accountability, making accountability easier for the young people and the civil society organizations (CSOs) to follow.

The conference is also a knowledge exchange platform. It was originally initiated in 2016 to support young people’s access to knowledge programs, not just speeches. The young people are already audiences for many speeches, speech events. So rather, they themselves become speakers. They become the audience and speaker. They become the challengers and disruptors in a setup that is friendly to them. They feel this space is safe for them. The conference gives them a voice to raise questions, ask about their well-being, and what is being done to help advance their knowledge. This leads to responses and commitments. There are a lot of opportunities that the young people could leverage through the event. Some of our conference participants, nursing students, are currently completing doctorial programs in Japan. Nursing students undergoing PhD programs for the first time in the country through commitments leveraged during the conference.

The conference connects to international and regional events. This is a very key objective of the conference so that the conversation (in the conference) will connect with international and regional advancements. For example, last year we designed the conference concept note to connect the objectives to the Asia Pacific population conference. We were more focused on ICPD conversations in 2019 as it was the ICPD plus 25 that year. So, international regional events influence this local event. That is how we connect the dots so that the conference is part of the global conversation. Over the next few years, we will keep following this trend. The ICPD is 30 years old, and a lot of international events are coming up. We will definitely base our conversations and design the conference based on all the discussions and issues around them.

Keys to Success

PR: What are your keys to success? What should others think about so they can replicate the success that you have had?

SK:  There are three things that act as major drivers: C.C.A. which is communication, consistency, and advocacy which we follow in a comprehensive way to make the event successful.

NS: I will add good planning. We have limited budgets and resources. We need to make a concrete plan to implement. We allocate and reallocate resources through sharp planning. We spend every penny on the right things. We avoid unnecessary expenses, always go for the minimal approaches regarding budget allocation.

(Hover over the boxes below to discover SERAC Bangladesh’s three keys to success).

SK: The conference is systemic now. It is a natural event that takes place every year and people want to be there.

We cannot accommodate everyone though due to limited seats and limited capacity. They don’t want to be missed.They never want to be missed. The conference over the last eight years or so has seen the transition of four director generals of DGFP and all four DGs were part of the conference. They never missed it.  It is a set landmark that the DGs of DGFP chair the opening plenary. It has become a custom. We keep the seat open for them and for the directors of the different departments.