YSSE: thinks for youth, works for youth and goes with youth

In Bangladesh, how many of us know the term of “social entrepreneur”? This term has become more popular in western countries for making social changes. Moreover, our neighbor country, India is trying hard to build an impression over the fact of a social entrepreneur or entrepreneurship. In line with those initiative, a youth- led, growing social institution in Bangladesh named Youth School for Social Entrepreneur (YSSE), has come up with positive intention to work for the society that was formed as a nonprofit social institution in February 1, 2015, for promoting social entrepreneurship and fostering youth as social entrepreneurs to create positive social and environmental changes through their innovative ideas and actions. YSSE is headquartered in Bangladesh and it has flourished its network in 21 countries within one year.

YSSE believes today's youth can bring significant change in the society. It is a platform that assists invigorating youths to turn their ideas into realties. It aims at developing powerful youth-led entrepreneurship that will work towards resolving social and environmental problem all around the world as well as bridging the economic and gender inequality gaps in the society.

From the birth of Bangladesh youth are remained a crucial factor in every positive initiative. The vision of the country lies in the hands of our youths. They are filled with tremendous and towering ambitions. It will be a great wastage of human resources if these youths are not given an opportunity to exercise their talent. Our new generations are so determined to do some notable work for their own society.

To keep that in mind, YSSE has developed some learning mechanisms that can be very useful to bring out social entrepreneurs and give emphasize on various social issue towards youth people. YSSE organized its first workshop program under the supervision of hunger project Bangladesh in 28th march, 2015 titled “who wants to be entrepreneurs?” Youth from different universities, potential youth entrepreneurs and young professionals participated the workshop. Subsequently, it organized a number of workshop and seminars, i.e. “Self Development” the slogan of the workshop was “Give the power to empower” and “Youth career and leadership development”. The aims of this workshop and seminar were to support participants so that they can be motivated to be the successful social entrepreneur.

YSSE is not only confined itself in arranging workshops. It also organized open discussion forum with youth and seminars based on business techniques “How to design a business plan for social entrepreneurship?” Then it clarified the term of the social entrepreneur through a seminar titled “Youth and social entrepreneurship”.

YSSE has a vision for youth participation in social events and that’s why it had been participated Social entrepreneurship fair, Active citizen achiever summit-2015, Camp cool session-3 (a youth based training program). In addition, YSSE organized a procession on a theme of “Global climate march for a safe and clean Bangladesh”. In partnership with ILO, YSSE organized a two days long training program named “Generate your business idea” in December 2015 at SEL Center, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Francis De Silva, one of the master trainers of ILO to conduct this module in different countries, conducted this training.

Furthermore, YSSE organized a session on ‘The Art of Communication”. The session was conducted by Ms.Dana Le, Customer Success Manager in Splunk Inc Company which provides the leading platform for Operational Intelligence and Customers use Splunk to search, monitor, analyze and visualize machine data in San Francisco, California, USA.

Within one year working period, YSSE distributed winter cloths in rural areas of Bangladesh namely Lalmonirhat, Bandarban and Rajshahi districts under an event “Let’s stand beside the cold affected people with blanket”. It is YSSE who firstly introduced “organic agro-businesses in urban roof top”. It is a process that makes our beloved Dhaka city from a dessert dry over a polluted area to the green and lively city.

Youth School for Social Entrepreneurs (YSSE) celebrated its one year of tremendous success in developing Young Social Entrepreneurs in home and abroad on 1st February 2016.The vision of YSSE is to ensure employment and equity for youth through social entrepreneurship and capacity building while its mission is to create large scale job opportunities through social entrepreneurship by conducting training, counseling, monitoring etc. In one-year celebration program, all advisors, members of YSSE team, youth ambassadors, online and off-line volunteers and its good wishers were present.

Through the YSSE one year journey, it has achieved a tremendous success. Till date, YSSE has 11423 Facebook Likers. YSSE reached thousands of people from the all around of the world through the social media namely facebook, tweeter, linkedIn and Youtube etc. with the message of its vision and mission. A vibrant team consisting 30 Youth is actively working to promote the concept of social entrepreneurship and encourage the young community from all around the world. YSSE has now 100 online and off-line volunteers. It has trained up to 50 Youth Ambassadors who are at present trying to peruse in establishing a social entrepreneurship venture. To nurture a group of enthusiastic young community, YSSE has a dedicated Advisors Panel which is working restlessly to make the dream of YSSE successful.