PRODIGY (Promoting Democratic Inclusion and Governance through Youth) was a 21-month long project of the British Council that started in September 2014 with an aim to increase peaceful civic participation in local governance in Bangladesh by empowering the youth. The project has developed the knowledge and skills of 540 young Bangladeshis in 15 Union Parishads (UP’s) of three divisions through trainings, volunteer activities including youth club activities, theatre performances, internships with local government, and public dialogues, creating platforms and channels to ensure that the wider community has access to government information.
During the course of the project, the 540 young participants have been given the necessary skills to assess whether local government bodies are fulfilling their commitments and responding to citizens’ needs. Their capacities were developed in the areas of leadership; accountability, transparency, good governance and inclusivity; and grant management.
Once trained, these community leaders designed and initiated 75 Social Action Projects (SAPs) to provide information and raise awareness among their communities with particular focus on women, the poor, and marginalised groups about their civic rights. These included knowing how their needs, demands, and vulnerabilities are assessed by the government, how government priorities are set, and how specific interventions or development activities are designed, budgeted, and implemented by the local government. Through these innovative SAPs, the young community leaders continue to empower their communities by enabling them to demand greater transparency and accountability from the local governments.
PRODIGY had three strands to achieve its objectives. The first was knowledge development of young people through identification and training of 540 youths across three divisions, building them into agents for positive social change.
The second was community engagement. Experts from partner organisations assisted the 540 young leaders to design and plan their social actions projects, advising on outreach to local communities, and engagement of local government authorities.
The third and final strand was recognition and demonstration of positive youth engagement. PRODIGY participants celebrated International Youth day all 15 locations of the project involving more than 2500 young people along with representatives from local government, Department of Youth Development (DYD), civil society, electronic and print media personnel. PRODIGY National Youth Summit took place in Dhaka to recognise and showcase the work that PRODIGY youth leaders are doing through their SAP’s in all PRODIGY locations.
50% of the PRODIGY participants were female, while 10% belonged to the marginalised section of the community, which included people with disability, ethnic or religious minority, and people living in extreme poverty. A total of 15 participants, which comprises of 8 female and 7 male participants, were provided internship opportunities at local government offices.
Analysis of the 21-month long project, whose curtains fell on June, 2016, yielded inspiring results. More than 90% of the young people trained through PRODIGY have developed better understanding on transparency, accountability, inclusivity, basic citizen rights, leadership, grants management, project design, and community needs assessment. In addition, more than 80% of the youth trained have continued to act as agents of social change within their communities. Also these trained young people have initiated 75 social action projects to create awareness among the community people about different services which are supposed to be provided by the local government. These young people also motivated the community people to engage more with the local government body through various channels/activities through these 75 social action projects. The result has shown that the effort of these young people have contributed to increase peaceful civic participation in local governance in the work areas of PRODIGY.
