About Policy Hackathon
Policy Hackathon is a community driven event which aims to bring young leaders, policy makers and other industry professionals on the same platform to collaborate and share ideas with the goal of formulating innovative policy solutions.
Policy Hackathon on Future of Work
Since its inception, mainstreaming youth in its all initiatives has been one of IID’s key concentrations. This time, to fully leverage the demographic dividend, IID is organizing a Policy Hackathon to integrate Bangladeshi youth in developing creative policy solutions to challenges facing future of work, particularly in employment, skills and entrepreneurship and take them to the policymakers.
When and where is it?
On 16th, 17th and 18th August via Zoom
Who will take these challenges?
Bangladeshi youths aged between 18 and 35 who will be researching, brainstorming, creating and presenting policy solutions.
Who will attend?
Young leaders, policy makers, leading entrepreneurs, technical experts and all those who want to spend three days creating solutions to challenges facing Future of Work
Bangladesh now has 7 million small entrepreneurs, accounting for over 4% of the country’s total population, helping the country to rank 133rd out of 137 countries in the Global Entrepreneurship Index 2017. According to Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW), Bangladesh ranks last among all Asian countries. Several studies have revealed that young entrepreneurs face a range of youth-specific problems in starting and doing their business such as, lack of access to capital and credit, lack of trust among suppliers and customers, lack of family support, lack of experiences and skill, etc.
For a growing economy like Bangladesh that has just started its middle-income journey, the youth populace has resources to shift the gears to achieve the next developmental stage. At least for a decade now, Bangladesh is considered to be enjoying a demographic dividend. This ‘Demographic Dividend’ could turn into a ‘Demographic Disaster’ as youths account for 80% of the country’s unemployed population (BBS, 2018). On top of that, the COVID-19 pandemic is disproportionately affecting the youth of Bangladesh as a recent study has shown that this pandemic will push about 8.7 million Bangladeshi youth into poverty (Sanem,2021).
Among other key factors – including demographic, social and environmental changes, globalisation and glocalisation and labour flexibility – the 4IR’s wave of technological advancement is likely to influence the future of work the most in the 21st Century. The effect of labour digitization can be severe for Bangladesh youth, as a staggering 74% of Bangladeshi youths are not taking any initiative to improve their skills to meet post-Covid-19 job market challenges (BYLC, 2020).
