For the first time in the country, the Career Conference is being held at the Upazila level. A two-day ICT Freelancing Camp and Job Festival 2023 is going on at the Gol-e Afroz Government Honors College ground in Singra Upazila of Natore district. Three and a half thousand registered students participated in the festival. 15 IT companies participated in the fair with job offers. Also Bangladesh Freelancers Development Society, Coders Trust, Knockrek IT and Joy are conducting hands-on workshops on freelancing. Successful freelancers shared their success strategies. Upwork’s Bangladeshi representatives are conducting a special session on where and how to do freelancing. They also organized workshops on mobile app development.
The opening ceremony of the Freelancing Camp started on Friday morning through observing a minute of silence standing to commemorate the brutal killing of Bangabandhu and his family along with the martyrs and brave freedom fighters in the liberation war and all the meritorious children of the country who migrated to the land of no return. Then a Kathak dance on the transformation of digital Bangladesh was presented on behalf of Modern Cultural Academy. Chanchal Mahmud and his team presented the performane.
Md. Humayun Kabir, Project Director of Learning and Earning Project of Information and Communication Technology Division delivered a welcome speech at the opening ceremony. After his speech, two freelancers, Ashiqul Islam and Saurabh Chowdhury, who received training from this project, shared their success stories. After their speech, the chief guest of the program, the ICT State Minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak.handed over certificates to four of the 950 participants of the project.
Md. Sabbir Hossain of Natore, Umm Habiba Sathi and Md. Ishaq Ali and Jannatul Ferdous of Pabna received the certificate. Also, 6 people who turned from freelancers to entrepreneurs received allotment letters from the chief guest at Singra Sheikh Kamal IT Training and Incubation Center. Digipro Digital, Nokrek IT, Coder Trust, Envision, Zaman IT and Shikho Amrai received the allotment letters.
Gol-e Afroz Government Honors College Principal Professor Md. Farhad Hossain, Singra Upazila Executive Officer Mahmuda Khatun and outgoing Executive Officer MM Samirul Islam, Mayor Jannatul Ferdous and others were present.
While speaking as the Chief Guest of the occasion, the State Minister for Information and Communication Technology Zunaid Ahmed Palak said, “I see educated unemployed young women going from door to door for jobs in movies and dramas. The soles of their shoes get flattened. But there is no job. Jobs are not available without the influence of uncles and aunts or some influential leaders, recommendations and lobbying. But as the government of People’s Leader Sheikh Hasina has created opportunities for digital Bangladesh in the last 14 years, I want to say with confidence today that no educated youth of Bangladesh will be unemployed if they receive proper education and acquire skills, Inshallah.”
ICT state minister urged the youth to shine like the sun and light up the world. He said that the country’s 5 crore students will lead Sheikh Hasina’s smart Bangladesh in 2041. The modern form of Bangabandhu’s dream of Sonar Bangla will be developed as Smart Bangladesh. For that we are focusing on developing skilled human resources.
Meanwhile, the state minister emphasized building a career through self-learning by utilizing the power of the internet and the talent of the youth through skill acquisition.
The state minister said that by 2025, we can create one million more IT freelancers on the soil of Bangladesh. As a result, we can increase the export income of the ICT sector from one and a half billion dollars to 5 billion dollars. Bangladesh will be known as a talent-based innovative country in the world.
After the chief guest’s speech, Jayita Banerjee, a successful woman freelancer in digital marketing of Upwork, discussed the challenges of freelancing. He said that freelancing can never be done on mobile. But learning and practice can be done from mobile.
Then in the discussion, Subir Nakarek, CEO of Nakarek IT, highlighted his own freelancing journey and said that people are bigger than their dreams. Young people must always be determined to move forward in realizing this dream.
Dina Mri, CEO of Northern IT Institution for Digital Marketing, Himalaya Nakarek for Graphics Design and Pranjal Nakarek for Web Development and Digitan also spoke.
Successful freelancer Thorma Trishna Deo was present as the special guest of the program who spoke on the immense potential of women freelancers. Successful web developer and freelancer Md. Minhaj Uddin highlighted the reality of how to earn dollars despite studying in Madrasah. This young man from Sherpur said, “My friends earn Tk20,000 per month, but I studied at Qaumi Madrasah after receiving ICT training, now I earn Tk20-25,000 per month from Upwork and Fiber.”
After that, Upwork’s Lead Manager (Operation) Saidul Mamun Khan highlighted in the discussion about how to overcome fear and become successful in freelancing.
In the afternoon after the Friday break, Soumya Supriya, trainer at Coder Trust, shed light on what are the most in-demand skills for freelancing today. He said, user experience and web development in freelancing can earn a maximum of 8 thousand US dollars. Also, it is possible to earn 7500 in software development, 7000 in project management, 6000 in account management, 5500 in business analyst and 5000 in content creation.
However, Upwork’s top rated seller Uppal Kumar discusses freelancing in account and book keeping.
And freelancer success stories were attended by Shishir Ahmed, the best freelancer in domain and web hosting server management and security, designer AB Siddique, SEO expert Hasibun Hasan Emily, web developer Solaiman Haider and Kaj 360 founder Emrajina Islam.
Quiz and prize distribution was held in the afternoon. The winners were – Super Hussain, Sadia Sultana Mim and Turya. Singra Mayor Jannatul Ferdous handed over the prizes to the winners. In the closing speech, she said, many of us want to earn money very easily. Don’t want to suffer. But those who stick it out in the end are the ones who succeed.
In this way ICT freelancing camp was held in Singra as the first Upazila of Bangladesh. And this two-day career festival will end with the job fair on Saturday.