Championing employment opportunities for teens
Hack for Earth 2021 was a global online hackathon at the world exhibition Expo2020 in Dubai, in collaboration with the United Nations (UN) and Sweden. Through this event, young people aspire to create new digital solutions to solve the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 1,371 teams from 121 countries competed under 7 different categories: Education, Environment, Human Rights, Sustainable Society, Health, Water, and Partnership.
Luminous Teen from Bangladesh was the winner under the 'Partnership' category and the founder, Md Jahirul Islam, was invited to the Hack for Earth Award Ceremony where pitched the solution to the head jury group, competing for the Hack for Earth Award.
Alongside Jahirul, Team Luminous Teen consists of Md Talha Jobaer, from BAF Shaheen College and Md Adib Raian and Sorder Rakib Hassan, from Notre Dame College.
"Luminous Teen intends to support employment opportunities for teenagers. We want to ensure a certain degree of financial independence for every teenager, and help them utilise early-age employability by converting their skills to money," Jahirul shared.
"Our policy, with proper consideration of the socio-economic barriers and public psychology, will follow a step-by-step approach. With necessary resources and partnerships, this will result in a fruitful transition of child labourers to kids enjoying the right of education, school enrichment, and financial flexibility," he explained. Luminous Teen primarily focuses on achieving SDG 8 and SDG 17.
The team has carefully studied feasibility while developing their model as they want to make this a global movement. In order to ensure proper implementation, the idea has to be backed up by a huge workforce, meaningful partnerships, resources and enthusiastic support from local governments. Moreover, proper safeguarding, personalised support for teenagers, cooperation of the target audience, infrastructure support and positive mass psychology towards change can help fight any potential threat yet to be addressed.
Luminous Teen will be working with local experts to derive an appropriate version of their model to be implemented in many other countries. "We dream of a Bangladesh where kids will be learning, earning and growing, with all their rights preserved and all their skills given the opportunity to flourish," Jahirul concluded.
The author is a freelance journalist who likes reading, scribbling, and blogging. Email: [email protected]
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