With thousands of students graduating every year from universities around the country, one would expect that Bangladesh’s labour market would have no problems catering to employer’s expectations. However, outdated syllabuses coupled with a lack of hands-on education or knowledge of workplaces along with mismatch of talent have employers scrambling to find what they need.

With millennials putting more priority on growth, purpose and empowerment when making career choices and sticking to them rather than salary or job security, finding changemakers has become a challenge.

The crisis was best put into words by Sir Fazle Hasan Abed during his address marking BRAC’s 40th anniversary in 2012: “Unfortunately, public education systems in most developing countries are unfit and unsuited to prepare our youth for the 21st century knowledge society that we must aspire to.”

“Outdated approaches to teaching must give way to new techniques that teach our children not to memorise texts, but to think critically and solve problems creatively. We must give greater thought, and direct greater resources towards early childhood development, and social and emotional learning.”

BRAG, with its 63,000 workforce , has found a unique way of making sure that the organisation never goes out of context, despite being nearly as old as Bangladesh.

BRAC’s uniqueness lies in its rigorous culture of capacity development and empowerment of the people it works with and serves, which led to training of thousands of rural young women in Bangladesh with minimum education during the 80s and 90s. They became the organisation’s frontlines – teachers, barefoot lawyers, health workers and community mobilisers. This large workforce had helped to bring about the massive structural transformation in service delivery that continued until recent years. BRAC also has been the home to talented and passionate young people, who want a career with social impact.

BRAC had started its unique one- year-long young professionals (YP) programme and management trainee (MT) programme in 2008 with the aim to develop young leaders by equipping them with the right skills and nurturing their aspirations and ideas.

The expectation of these programmes is not only limited to building the leadership pipeline for BRAC but to create the next generation of future leaders who, going forward, would continue to contribute in the society – be it from his/her professional capacity at BRAC or from an individual space.

The YPs and MTs are chosen through a separate, rigorous recruitment process from thousands of applicants every year. The selected embark on a journey designed to give them a 360-degree learning experience through extensive on – the – job and classroom training and orientations.

During this period, the participants get an all-access to areas covered by BRAC in the form of field or programme attachments, role-playing positions, exposure trips etc. All these experiences enable them to build a practical knowledge base and gain adaptability to work in extremely demanding situations with a diverse range of people.

The young professionals and trainees spend a significant amount of time working alongside or shadowing veterans, irrespective of their position, who have been working in the organisation for many years at the field level. This is also the time when they start building their network and personal rapport at various levels within the organisation.

At BRAC, both the young professionals and management trainee programmes are considered important outlets for shaping the organisational culture, change management and bridging the gap between the head office and field offices. The young professionals and management trainees find the opportunity to share their observations drawing from their experiences through presentations, projects and discussions at various forums.

Using these platforms, they bring to the attention of the management the problems on the ground along with possible solutions. All these opportunities and exchanges opens up a treasure trove of otherwise undocumented insights which can be highly valuable once they are deployed in a programme.

As a result, BRAC’s initiatives continue to remain relevant as it strives to understand and identify with today’s young people. Going forward, these young talents from BRAC are contributing to social transformation and growth by unleashing the force within through their energy, passion and innovative ideas.