A stellar SBYS '15

The Social Business Youth Summit (SBYS '15) organised by Social Business Youth Alliance Global (SBYA) took place on June 1, 2015 at the Krishibid Institution of Bangladesh. Like every year, the aim of summit was to get the youth more acquainted with and interested in social business and to inspire social entrepreneurs in the country.

In the opening speech, SBYA founder Sazeeb Islam pointed out that very few of the universities of our country have social business clubs and stressed that it is a necessity to instill young minds with the idea of social business, which can bring social good as well as profit.

About 600 students from all over Bangladesh and countries like Morocco, Australia, Germany, Italy and UK attended the event and shared their experiences in the various sessions. Salman Imtiaz, an IUT student spoke about his expectations at the summit: "I have always wanted to learn directly from the Nobel Laureate Dr. Mohammad Yunus. This is my opportunity to fulfill that desire." When asked why an engineering student such as himself is interested in social business he replied, "Although I am an engineering student, I have a deep sense of responsibility to my society and I think social business is a great way to solve problems around us with profitable solutions."

In the group discussion session, participants were divided into five groups to talk about social business; sustainability and CSR; the process of transforming an idea into social business; Google's startup initiatives; the power of social media; and how to identify social problems through our lens. On his experience at the Google session, Ahmed Muntasir Mahin, a third year undergrad at IBA said, "It has been a great sitting for me because I did not know of all these crazy and easily accessible tools Google has for businesses, especially those which could be very useful for startups."

The summit ended with the keynote speech from the ever-inspiring Professor Muhammad Yunus. Citing "yesterday's science fiction" as "today's reality", he urged the youth to envisage similar fictions about society, terming them "social fictions." He encouraged the youth of our country to become self-reliant and bring forward more and more innovative solutions to social problems.