Adolescent Development Programme

The Adolescent Development Programme started in 1993, rising out of BRAC’s school for older children. In order to retain the literacy numeracy and life skills that many girls lost after primary schooling, BRAC’s Education Programme opened the Adolescent Clubs giving girls the chance to socialise, play indoor games, sing, dance and exchange views and experiences-all activities that were frowned upon in their homes. It works with MoWCA (Ministry of Women & Children Affairs) and Department of Youth Development under the Ministry of Youth and Sports.

Activities of Adolescent Development Programme are given below:

1. Adolescent Clubs (Kishori Kendro) are safe places where adolescents girls can read, socialise, play games, take part in cultural activities and have open discussion on personal and social issues with their peers. Each club comprises of 25-35 teen age members of the 10-19 age group. One adolescent leader is responsible for the operation of a club. At present there are around 8,100 Adolescent clubs all over Bangladesh. Its activities include exchanging book, reading newspapers and magazines, playing indoor and outdoor games, performing cultural programs and observing different international and national days.

2. Adolescent Peer Organised Network (APON) offers adolescents life skills based education- facilitated by their peers- on different social and health related issues, such as reproductive health, sexual abuse, children’s rights, gender, HIV/AIDS, STI, eve teasing (verbal sexual abuse), child trafficking, substance abuse, violence, family planning, child marriage, dowry, and acid throwing. The purpose is to develop adolescent life skills and raise awareness of important but stigmatised issues. These courses are offered in adolescent clubs, secondary schools, madrasas (religious education schools) and working places.

3. Livelihood Training courses are offered to girls to empower them financially. Adolescents receive training on tailoring, embroidery, journalism, poultry, livestock and beauty care etc. (in collaboration with the Ministry of Youth and Sport and other local organisations). It has functions in 307 Upazila (57 districts).

Special Network for Adolescent Photographers (SNAP) is a network of adolescent female photographers who received training on digital photography. The adolescents took photography as their profession. By this occupation they not only overcome their financial hardships but also able to highlight different adolescent related issues through their photography. The girls take photos relevant to social issues and organise exhibitions to raise awareness within their communities.

4. Communication, Awareness and Advocacy works with the interaction and dialogue among adolescents, their parents and community influential. Different types of forums with mothers, parents and community leaders create the foundation for a supportive communication network. This formalised communication network will help ensure that the ideas of adolescents are heard as well as provide transparency to community attitudes supporting adolescent development. The Community members in rural areas often have very little idea on children’s rights, importance of girl’s education and many other adolescent issues. Therefore it is essential to bring whole communities under one roof to aware them about adolescent issues.

ADP Communications, Awareness and Advocacy has taken following initiatives,

Interactive Popular Theatre (IPT) plays a strong role to disseminate and initiate dialogue among community audiences. Therefore, ADP established APON interactive theatre group in 2005 across the country with its adolescent members. Each group performs IPT shows on different social issues to create awareness among the community members.

Adolescent fair has also been introduced in 2008 as a part of ADP’s different awareness activities. This fair creates a space solely for the adolescents and establishes adolescent’s identity as a distinct group of the population. This occasion also brings their potential in front of the wider communities. The whole fair is organised with different products made by adolescent club members such as handicrafts, nursery items, local and tribal goods etc. Essay writing competition and painting competition for students, cultural programme, sporting events, theatre and rally are organised as part of this event. Through these fairs ADP tries to involve people from every sphere of the community to create awareness on different adolescent related issues.

Cultural Competition is an initiative to aware community about the importance of cultural activities for cognitive development of adolescents. This activity brings out adolescent’s talent through cultural competition and provides the required training to increase their capacity in cultural performance. This competition started from Adolescent Club followed by cluster Adolescent Clubs, upazila and district level subsequently. The final competition takes part in national level and top contestants participate in a competition which is telecasted on satellite TV channels. This initiative received positive responses from the community and plays a significant impact for adolescents’ cultural development.

Sports for Development is a new initiative which includes two activities. One is outdoor sports and the other is safe swimming. Outdoor sports initiative involves adolescent girls to increase girls’ participation in outdoor sports and creating awareness on different issues among mass people through different sporting events. ADP provided formal training by national coach to form football, cricket and volleyball team and organised regular practice session for adolescent girls. This initiative received positive response from the community and from the national sports federation.
 
Safe Swimming is another such initiative which aims to reduce child death from drowning by engaging adolescents as swimming instructors. ADP started this initiative from July 2009 in collaboration with CIPRB (Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh) and Bangladesh Swimming Federation. The technical support is given by CIPRB and the Bangladesh Swimming Federation. Older adolescents (18+) from the ADP program are selected as Community Swimming Instructor and are trained by Bangladesh Swimming Federation to teach swimming lesson to the children of 4 to 10 years of ages from their respective community. Through this programme people in the community not only learned about the scientific way of swimming but also realised the importance of knowing how to swim.
 

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