19 February 2012, Dhaka. A national debate competition was launched in the city at Bashundhara City aiming to facilitate the underprivileged secondary schools students to enable their inbuilt talents and skills to flourish. On 18th February Saturday a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed by BRAC, Debate for Democracy and ATN Bangla to start national level debate competition among 8,000 secondary schools in rural areas. Around 40,000 secondary school students will attend workshop and participate in the competition.
Education Secretary Dr Kamal Abdul Naser Chowdhury, Director General of Higher and Secondary Education Nomanur Rashid, ATN Bangla Chairman Dr Mahfuzur Rahman, ATN Bangla Senior Vice President Nowazesh Ali Khan, BRAC Executive Director Dr. Mahbub Hossain, BRAC Education Programme Director Dr. Safiqul Islam, BRAC Education Programme General Manager Dr Joya Sengupta, and Debate for Democracy Director Hasan Ahmed Chowdhury Kiron, among others, attended the MoU signing ceremony.
In his speech Education Secretary Dr Kamal Abdul Naser Chowdhury said that debate is a healthy competition. It creates logical attitude among the debaters. Debaters learn to study beyond their textbooks and also learn how to use information in proper way.
BRAC Executive Director Dr. Mahbub Hossain said that to have economic growth of our country we have to introduce beyond school-soft skills for our growing number of youth. By different initiative we have to focus on quality education in secondary level.
BRAC Education Programme Director Dr. Safiqul Islam mentioned that this is the fourth year of organizing this competition at national level and this year one third secondary school students of our country will participate in the competition.
