Uttoron organises first round of awareness raising campaign and boot-camp in Sylhet and Habiganj district

Uttoron-Skills for better life is a skills development project, funded by Chevron and implemented by Swisscontact. Impacting the lives of over 1,400 community youths in phase-I (2016-2019), through providing skills training in Sylhet division, Uttoron project aims to scale up the number in phase-II (2019-2022) up to 2,000 and expand the area, not confining to only Sylhet but also in Dhaka division. To select the right participants for skills training, Uttoron project undergoes a multi-layered trainee selection process also known as boot-camp after informing the community youths about the skills training through an awareness raising campaign.  

The three-step boot-camp involves awareness raising campaign, preliminary selection of trainees and motivational workshop. Seven days prior to the training, promotional campaign to inform the community people was carried on. People were informed about the registration camp, date and venue through announcements, leaflets, posters and banners. Over 14,000 community youths were outreached through this awareness campaign. Preliminary registration camps were organized parallelly with awareness campaign at two different training canters of Sylhet, namely- Bangladesh Technical Training and Development Center (BTTDC) and Underprivileged Children’s Education Program (UCEP) and six union parishad of Habiganj. Youths then rounded up in the registration camps and registered for motivational training. Through pre-selected criteria, the registrations were scanned, and selected youth were given a yes card to attend the motivational workshop. First four batches of the motivational workshop were held at Sylhet and Habiganj for 214 youth from 27-Jan-20 to 02-Feb-20. The two-day long motivational workshop included interactive sessions to raise motivation of the potential trainees and to assess their level of motivation for skills training. The participants were informed about the opportunities and benefits of different trades and were given the opportunity to choose their preferred trade from a set of offered trades. Youth having the right aspiration for skills training will be finally selected for skills training on their preferred trades. A certificate of participation was handed over to each of the participants of the workshop.