The ECP fellowship is a prestigious fellowship program taking place since 2011. This year BYEI has received a total of 900 applications from 160 academic institutions across Bangladesh. Out of 900 highly competitive applications, 42 ECP fellows have been selected from 30 academic institutions representing all eight divisions of Bangladesh.
The ECP 2022 Cohort represents diverse academic disciplines and areas of personal and professional interests, which makes ECP 2022 the most diverse cohort since the launch of the ECP in 2011. Geographically, ECP 2022 fellows hail from all corners of Bangladesh, including from the remotest Sundarban area of Khulna to the Hill Tracts of Chattogram to the climate-vulnerable coastal districts from the South.
They come from diverse socio-economic backgrounds with varied professional interests ranging from deep ecology to abstract paintings to conservation to environmental law to animal welfare to agroecology to environmental politics to eco-spirituality to circular economy and so on. Some of the fellows grew up with very difficult life circumstances and have lived experiences of the unfolding environmental crisis and the impacts of the climate crisis. Their lived experiences make them compassionate for life and nature and gravitate them towards ownership of environmental problems and being a steward of the environment.
ECP 2022 Fellow Tajrean Alam Nili, a student of Public Administration at the University of Dhaka, who is a snake rescuer and volunteers at the Animal Welfare Foundation, shares,
“Destroying nature ≠ development. Wasting food, littering ≠ classy. Hurting animals ≠ fun. This needs to be changed, WE must change. We are the caretakers of mother Earth, not ravagers. Together, we lead, and protect, for us. Because forest, nature, animals, and humans, we all live together.”
– Tajrean Alam Nili, ECP Fellow 2022
The ECP fellows will embark on a one-year journey, starting with a 5-day long residential Earth Camp. During the Earth Camp, the ECP fellows will deeply immerse into thought-provoking exercises regarding the critical discourse of environmental development, planetary stewardship and worldviews, and the issue of rights and justice in natural resource management. The ECP fellows are also going to be equipped with cutting-edge knowledge of systems and design thinking for designing sustainable solutions for some of the enduring Complex Adaptive Systematic (CAS) environmental problems that plague their communities and Bangladesh at large.
After the Earth Camp, the ECP fellows will put their enhanced knowledge into practice and exercise leadership by establishing an Earth Club in their respective institutions and implementing Environmental Action Projects (EAP). The Earth Clubs will act as environmental activism and advocacy hubs in their respective communities and educational institutions. The ECP fellows need to establish partnerships and allies among themselves and others to develop highly impactful EAPs. BYEI and its partners will support the implementation of 5-8 highly impactful and sustainable EAPs.
About ECP
Earth Champions Program (ECP) is the signature youth environmental stewardship program of BYEI designed to equip aspiring change-makers of Bangladesh with environmental knowledge and leadership capacity to be an agent of change for a just and prosperous Bangladesh.
Earth Champions Program (ECP) 2022 is supported by the U.S. Embassy in Dhaka and the Associate Partners are the Embassy of France in Dhaka and the Arannayk Foundation.
For more information, please visit https://www.byei.org/ecp and https://www.byei.org/ecp2022 If you need any additional information, please write to us at [email protected]
