“ Lets Talk Failure” was held on the 21st of November in the Eastern University campus. This was a day long program with participants coming from different institutions. Chief Project Coordinator of SAYS, Ashraful Islam inaugurated the event with warm greetings, following a short presentation on South Asian Youth Society (SAYS). 14 motivational speakers conducted sessions throughout the day, sharing their thoughts and stories on failure. When asked about the initiative, Towfiq A, Khan, the Founder and President of SAYS said, “This is a unique initiative that we have taken and we want to promote this initiatives further and create a trend setter from a South Asian perspective.”
Speakers ranged from different back grounds, from doctors, engineers ,entrepreneurs to artists.Speaking at the event, Asif Newaz, Managing Director of Asia Foils, said “ I don’t believe in the word failure, I just find failure as a process that everyone has to go through”. Saif Kamal, Founder of TORU, shared how its not always necessary to have tradition “Stable” career and that shifting according to your goals is what is necessary.Solaiman Shukhon, Head of Marketing, Elite Technologies and also a Standup Comedian, used his vibrant presence to motivate the audience and noted how although society tries to hold the youth down, breaking free is what is important.
Prema Nazia Andaleeb, an artist, expressed how failure helped her to experiment and determine her style of art.Zonaed Rabbani, Development Practitioner, said “ Society doesn’t have the right to label any inpidual a failure, whether a person is a failure is up to them”Afreen Hossain, Senior Quality Engineer, shared her views of failure from an Information technology (IT) perspective and how in professional life, dealing with failure is a major issue..Masum Billah, a partipant at the event said, “ I have learnt to see failure from a different perspective today and I believe that this will help me in building my career”
The program was concluded with the Chief Guest, Abdul Hannan Chowdhury, Pro-Vice Chancellor of Eastern University, expressing his appreciation towards the organizers for such a unique initiative and expressed his failure story. Throughout the program, the participants interacted among themselves and with the speakers, trying to analyze their failures. South Asian Youth Society expressed its commitment to expanding the reach of such introspective talk session and thus brings a positive difference in the mindset of the youth on November 22, 2014.The author is a member of Active Citizenship Team, SAYS