More than 2,000 school dropouts, including 1,120 girls and 30 transgender, were given technical skill development training for making them worthy citizens in the city.
BRAC, an international development organisation based in Bangladesh, under its ‘Skill Development Programme’ provided the training on different need-based trades and facilitated their post-training job scopes.
The information was disclosed at a view-sharing meeting with BRAC fieldworkers at its learning and resource centre in Rajshahi city on Wednesday.
BRAC Executive Director Dr Muhammad Musha, Programme Directors Dr Shafiqul Islam and Anna Minj, General Manager Shahed Shams Azad, Director Maria Haque, Associate Director Dr Mursheda Chowdhury, Senior Programme Manager Dr Monwarul Aziz and Programme Manager Raquib Abhi addressed the meeting.
Before the meeting, they visited various BRAC programmes being implemented in the region to see for themselves progress of those.
The programmes included education, social empowerment, integrated development, gender justice and diversity, microfinance, human resource improvement, health and nutrition, infant and young child feeding, adult health and infant and maternal care.
In his remarks, Dr Muhammad Musha underlined the need for collective efforts of all government and non-government organisations to bring all dropouts under skill development scheme.
He viewed the dropout children do not get proper guidance from their family and also get involved in many juvenile delinquent activities and drug addiction.
Time has come to help these children overcome their unhealthy mental condition and make themselves worthy citizens by taking proper skilled development trainings, he added.
Dr Musha also said building social awareness among the community people, especially parents and teachers, has become an urgent need for prevention of child marriage and dowry for substantial and sustainable reduction of violence against women, BSS reports.
He urged the BRAC field workers to discharge their duties with utmost sincerity and honesty to eradicate the social problems.