Executive Director, SERAC-Bangladesh
SM Shaikat is the Executive Director of SERAC-Bangladesh, a youth focused organization advocating and implementing programs on access to health rights, democratic participation of youth, family planning, friendly services, and gender-based violence prevention in Bangladesh. He was the Bangladesh country moderator to the 11th International Dialogue on Population and Development in Berlin.
Shaikat has worked with a number of global youth agencies, including as a Women Deliver Young Leader, Bangladesh Country Coordinator for International Youth Alliance for Family Planning and an Ambassador for Young Men for Gender Equality. He was elected to the UN-Habitat Youth Advisory Board in 2015 and has been a speaker at several events during the 69th, 70th, 72th, and 76th UN General Assemblies in 2014, 2015 and 2017, 2021 and at 62nd Commission on the Status of Women in 2018. He was the opening plenary speaker of the 9th World Urban Forum in Malaysia and a speaker at the Urban Economy Forum in 2021.
Shaikat founded the Bangladesh National Youth Conference on Family Planning which SERAC hosts annually since 2016 and made a sustainable shared space for youth and high-level policy makers, and FP and SRHR agencies in Bangladesh to raise advocacy issues, and account for policy commitments by government and stakeholders. With his leadership, SERAC is leading the formation of Urban Youth Councils in 4 cities of Bangladesh with UN Democracy Fund, and UN-Habitat. He was nominated by the U.S. Department of State to the International Visitors Leadership Program in 2013, and Asia Young Leader for Democracy in 2015. He has been named as a Bayer Scholar and awarded the 120Under40 Championship by the Bill and Melinda Gates institute at the Johns Hopkins University. With his leadership, young people in Bangladesh are progressing by learning, standing by and protecting the rights of others.