From the YAB · Part 4

About their hopes and dreams

When working with adolescents, many anticipate challenges. How do you motivate them? How do you develop a relationship with them? How to approach them at this complex time in their lives? Despite this, I love working with adolescents and youth. They’re the ones who will change things, who will become tomorrow’s leaders and who have the power to make a difference, even if they’re often unaware of it.

Above all, working with youth means seeing a little hope for a better world every day. It’s a chance to get close to youth who are motivated to improve their future. It’s also, and above all, a lot of questioning about my own practices, and how we, as adults, can contribute to creating better conditions for youth.

In this project, I’m working with youth who love their community. Their daily lives in this shantytown are filled with color, culture, and the people they love. In their previous articles, they talked about their community, what they love and what they’ve learned from the project so far.

In this article, I wanted to highlight their motivation, enthusiasm, and optimism, which I see every day. What are your hopes for youth in your community? What are your dreams for a better future?

To my surprise, their responses weren’t as positive as I’d expected. Most of them have little or no hope, although they do see some solutions. I think I was naive enough to believe that their participation in the project could motivate them to believe that a better future might indeed be possible. After all, we’re mobilizing youth in the community to find real solutions to make things better. But maybe they’ve had too many false promises to really believe it, and they’re probably right.

The fact is, they’re very aware of the limits imposed by their community. Very aware of where their power ends, as youth, and of what lies ahead. Very aware that this little project won’t change their world, and that the social structures of their community will persist well beyond their participation in the project.

Still, I smiled as I read them, glad to see them mobilizing and naming the issues that limit their opportunities and their needs. Better educational and employment opportunities. Better protection of their rights, especially in the face of child marriage.

So, I’m publishing their answers to my questions as I received them. After all, they know very well that these answers are on our site and that the aim is to disseminate what they want share through these articles.

We often say that we want to amplify the voices of youth through participatory projects like this one. I think we also need to amplify their voices when their messages are not what we expected. And so, here’s what they had to say.

Soborna

In the present generation, I expect nothing better from our community teenagers. Because currently in our community 50% of teenage girls are child married and get pregnant at a young age. Due to which they fall off before they grow. So, I don’t expect anything good for them.

My biggest dream for the better future of my community is to provide employment for our teenagers. So that they can afford their education and all the expenses themselves. Because of being financially weak, many teenage girls get married at a young age and get pregnant at a young age because they cannot afford birth control pills or condoms. This has a very bad effect on the sexual health of our teenage girls. So if we arrange work for our teenagers, these bad aspects that happen in our community will be reduced a lot. So this is my biggest dream for the beautiful future of my community.

Sumaiya

I don’t expect anything good from the teenage girls in our community because they are getting into child marriage despite repeated child marriage training. 70% of girls in my community know that having children at a young age is bad for their sexual health and yet they have children at a young age, so I have no hope for the teenagers in my community.

My biggest dream for the bright future of my community is to make our community beautiful and to make the future of our teenagers beautiful and bright. Educating the teenagers of our community and stand on their own feet, but some do not get higher education due to financial condition as some are kicked out of school because they cannot pay their school fees on time. But in our community, it is better to provide jobs to teenagers so that they can meet all their expenses and reduce the financial pressure from their families.

Then a beautiful community is created in higher education. My biggest dream is for the future of my community ❤

Suvo

What I hope for the teenagers in my community is:

I have big hopes not only for my community, but also for my country. Bangladesh is my country, so the future of the country must be accepted by us. We will do something that is good for ourselves and good for every citizen of Bangladesh. That is, we are the citizens of Bangladesh. I will not do anything that will harm the people of my country physically or mentally. We will not do anything that will harm the future generations of our country. We will always try to do something that will improve my country. All the next generation can prosper. This country is mine, this state is mine, this community is mine, this area is mine, so I have to think about everything. I have to think about my country. Basically, the future of our country depends on the youth of our country.

But, as a result of child marriage, we suffer all kinds of damage. For example:

★Child marriage results in early deprivation of education.

★ Family pressure comes on oneself in various ways, then one’s mental damage is done.

★The death rate of women and children increases.

★Women conceive at a younger age.

Due to these reasons, our country, our state, our community, are far behind in all areas. In my opinion, I think child marriage is a terrible disease like cancer which is spreading among us. When we think about our community, we think about our country. This disease like child marriage should be removed from our country. Then we can build a beautiful country, a beautiful state, a beautiful community.

For the better future of my community, my biggest dreams are:

Beautiful dreams, beautiful future, but everyone’s dreams come true. You have to work hard to make your dreams come true. We are the people of our community. The future of our community is on us, but what are we doing? We are drowning our future like something sinks in water. We have to take action, we all have to come together. Then we dream and make the future beautiful. If we want to make our future beautiful, if we want to fulfill our dreams, we need to acquire knowledge and the greatest means of acquiring knowledge is education, but we are holding ourselves back from education. But this cannot be allowed to continue, we have to turn around. I believe that those parents who do not want their children to study and do not want to get married early, we can convince their parents, we can tell them the harmful aspects of early marriage, after they know the harmful aspects, I believe that they will definitely be aware. But to take these steps we all have to come together. We may not be able to make our community like Paris, but we can make a beautiful future right. If child marriage can be stopped in this country, many boys and girls will be able to establish themselves and make their own future.

I want to make a beautiful future for my community, then first of all we have to stop child marriage from our country and eliminate this disease.

This is my dream, and not just a dream, but a very big wish.

Tamanna

If we have a government high school in our community, teenagers will be able to study and the rate of child marriage will be reduced. A government health center would be good. If the people of the community get medical care, the amount of any disease will be reduced. If there was a specific playground in the community, then the development of teenagers would be better. If we take such an initiative, our community will be beautiful.

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Keya

With the youth of my community, I hope that they will succeed in the work that we are doing. I hope that they will help people’s life to be a simple, beautiful, and free life. They will shine in the community by working for this project. They will focus and working will brighten the future of the community. My biggest dream is to build a beautiful environment and society.

Yasin

I have no hope for the girls of my community because they take all their own decisions because of their emotions, and get married at a young age so I have no hope for them.

For the better future of my community, we think we should open Kishor-Kishori Club (Adolescents Club) where they will be taught handicrafts. In this they will be skilled in different work and they will not be addicted to all the bad deeds outside. So we dream that a Kishor-Kishori Club will be opened here and we will be taught many types of work, so that in the future I can eat and live a good life.

Puspo

There is very little hope for teenage girls in our community because they marry themselves at a young age and take responsibility themselves because of some family pressure. They run away and marry themselves. If child labor could be reduced I think there would be less child marriages because they are very young. They eventually decide to run away because they get a garment job at a young age.

And in my community, I think it would have been more beautiful if I had worked in the garment industry, or if fathers had educated their children, they would have realized that child marriage would decrease.

Boishakhi

I learn a lot from the teenagers in my community, and I know they are ignorant about child marriage and sexually unsafe practices. Many youth still do these things despite receiving a lot of training about child marriage and sexual health. So I don’t expect anything good from the teenagers in this community.

Taniya

I don’t have any hopes for adolescents in our area, because now they make their own decisions about their life. They fall in love & get married. They don’t listen to their families. Then in our area, there are people who provoke adolescents. I want child marriage to stop. After that, in our community, people who live there, I want changes for them. I want to give good advice to adolescents, I want to understand their mind, I want to bring them in a good path from the bad path & not to get pregnant at an early age, to take good arrangements. Only then the future of adolescents in our community will be good.