Share-Net Bangladesh Knowledge Fair:Identifying the Knowledge Gap in the Adolescent SRHR issue in Bangladesh

Around the applause of the lively presence of audience, Share-Net Bangladesh has organized Knowledge Fair 2017 for the second time on 21st December at Long Beach Suits. All the participants including the SRHR practitioners, researchers, gender specialists, teachers took an active participation during all the sessions, focused on Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health in Bangladesh.

The Knowledge Fair successfully identified the knowledge gaps in adolescent SRHR policy and practice in Bangladesh and the audiences and panel speakers talked out loud to fill up these gaps.

After this, there was presentation on three year’s journey of Share-Net Bangladesh and its contribution on the  SRHR field, Anika Binte Habib, Coordinator of Share-Net Bangladesh  demonstrated about the activities, achievement and future prospect of this knowledge platform.

Mushfiqa Zaman Satiar, the Senior Adviser-SRHR and Gender of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands was present as the Guest of Honor in the fair. She mentioned the support of the Dutch Embassy on the gender field in Bangladesh. She also emphasized the importance of the SRHR knowledge among the youth in the country. ‘If the youth have the proper knowledge about sexual and reproductive health, it will help them to get over their inhibitions to talk about such issues’ she opinionated.

The special guest of the fair, Nahim Razzaq MP, the member of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Youth and Sports pointed out the lack in the dissemination of the knowledge on SRHR among the youth. ‘Adolescents and teenagers need to have the access to the information.  The rights to having health and education is also important that we have the rights for information in the correct manner’ he said. He also signified the contribution of the Government of Bangladesh under the ICT division to prepare the cyber security to enable the monitoring system and stop the wrong information being flooded.

Arnob Chakraborty, Managing Director of RedOrange Media and Communications mentioned that SHARE NET is a platform of getting latest news, events going on, even job opportunity and other great opportunity regarding SRHR.

‘We need be more open minded about how we inform them and whether we are about their need vs what we have assumed they need to know’ said Sabina Faiz Rashid, Dean and Professor, James P Grant School of Public Health of BRAC University.

Informative presentation on the present scenario of adolescent SRHR field and the present policy of the government was presented by Action Aid, ADOHEARTS and Dustha Shastha Kendra. On the final session, the participants identified the knowledge gap on 9 adolescent health topics and suggested effective measures to connect the gaps. The topics were; Elimination of Physical Violence to Adolescent, Pregnancy among Adolescent Married Girl, Impact of Sex segregated Education Stereotype Gender Role, Nutrition Need of Adolescents, Right to education for Adolescent, Role of Teachers and Parents in providing CSE to the Adolescents, Right to Education for Adolescent with Special Needs, Adolescent Friendly Healthcare and Access to Contraception for the Adolescents.

The Knowledge Fair ended with the declaration of the SRHR Bangla dictionary which would be available in 2019.  On the upcoming year, Share-Net Bangladesh intends to have collaborative approach on the issue of child marriage.