Being An Active Citizen

It has been only four months since I became part of British council by taking Active Citizen Youth leadership training. The reason why I wanted to take this training was to find out how can leaders be trained as I always thought leaders were born. After the four day long training my whole perspective changed and I was totally a different and I dare say a better person. Now I know leaders can neither be trained nor be born, one can only be inspired to be a leader. I was happy enough with my life and never really realized my role for the community until this training. Now I know if I am not part of the solution I will always remain part of the problem. I am living in Rajshahi for about 3 years now and I know how difficult it is for college/University student to find a part time job there. So I along with my friends from ACYLT decided to create a web portal where we will help students living in Rajshahi find a part time job. I was busy with this web portal when CCD(center for communication and development) Bangladesh asked me to apply for ISV(International study visit) which I did without wasting any time. I was selected to represent Bangladesh in UK after a 10 minutes long interview. I was really excited to know that there would participants from 7 different countries there. So I was not only going to UK I was going to know about 7 other countries only in 7 days.

On the 1^st day the participants were asked to set up a stall to describe their countries and share interesting things from each country after visiting all the stalls. At the sharing session everyone was talking about Bangladeshi stall and how they liked our positivity and enthusiasm and they really liked my web portal and they promised me to have a look at it. I was so happy when other participants showed their interest in visiting Bangladesh. 

On the 2^nd day I learnt about “sheep mentality”. Sheep mentality is to follow around other and do nothing to solve issues. We are all the same no matter which country we belong to. We see something wrong in our society and decide to keep our mouth shut like everyone else. So we figured out some important steps to turn “Sheeple” into “People”.

I had the opportunity to meet Rushnara Ali, the first Bangladeshi-British MP, who likes to look at the bright side of every problem. If I didn’t meet her I would have never known how to handle problems with an optimistic smile.

As part of my 3 days community visit in UK I went to Birmingham, the city of rich culture and history, where I came to know about youth making a difference.  At BAYC (Birmingham association of youth club) I met this 19 years old guy named Abdul who is an entrepreneur and Marketing consultant of BAYC. I kind of felt old when I heard all the things he has done and achieved at such a young age. Then Michel O’Donnell, the director of BAYC inspired me by saying that it’s never too late to start.

After this life changing ISV I feel so enthused, energized, empowered and confident about brining positive changes to my community and my country. This ISV helped me to be in a global bond with other countries. Now I understand clearly that if you want to make this world a better place to live in you must start with your community first. The active citizen Strap line explains it all. “Globally connected, locally engaged”