Turning Kids to Superkids – Hussain Rifat

Hear from Hussain Rifat, the founder of “Opportunities For Kids”. This is a free online learning platform for Bangladeshi children.

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Firstly, tell us about opportunities for kids.

Opportunities For Kids (OFK) is a free online skill development platform for children and teenagers. At present, we are focusing on teaching 12 different skills to children aged from 4 to 17 years old. For time being we are only focusing on children who have access to the internet. They can practice watching our online tutorials for free. We are providing them video based on different skills made by our trainees, which allows children to select video according to their preferred skill and helps them to improve skills.

What/who inspired you to start this kind of platform?

There are a few things that led to the idea of Opportunities For Kids. We all know how hard the road to survive in our current jobs or career. Our employment criteria have changed a lot in the past. In the future, the fields of work will be depending according to the skillsets. Our dream is to gather all the skilled children of the country into the dream series of OFK and give them a successful platform as if they have the opportunity to demonstrate skills from any point of view. Opportunity for Kids will find out passionate children and will help them to succeed in their future careers.

What obstacles have you faced so far?

Raising funds was the hardest thing to do and we are still facing obstacles. We want to visit more schools, organise free workshops for children and make more tutorial videos. Because of financial constraints, we have to cut down our activities plan and be very selective in executing our plan.

As some of these 12 sectors are relatively new there is a lack of awareness amongst parents about how these sectors will make an impact on their children’s lives. Majority of parents are reluctant to teach new skills as they’re afraid that their children will spend more time on new skills rather than studying.

Any message you would like to convey to the youth individuals of our country?

There are a lot of issues in our country. Over the next decade, if we want to solve the most vital issues of our time, we need youth movements and social workers. Trust me, you don’t have to wait to be an adult to be an active member of your community. Your opinion matters and it should be heard. I believe that one day, passionate youth will change the world.