Thursday, September 06, 2012


How cool and interesting! UNICEF is helping to start and support a Children's News Service that will help children understand the basics of journalism while also providing the news information.

bdnews24.com, Unicef launching children journalism
Thu, Sep 6th, 2012 7:30 pm BdST
Dhaka, Sep 6 (bdnews24.com)—bdnews24.com and Unicef have joined forces to launch a Children's News Service to promote causes affecting 45 percent of Bangladesh's population.

The two organisations agreed a partnership at the newspaper's Mohakhali office on Thursday for the service that will be launched later on.

bdnews24.com will be making huge investments apart from editorial oversight in this venture with Unicef to introduce children journalism, Bangladesh's first Internet newspaper said in a media statement.

Children from all echelons of society will be able to practice and learn journalism at the online newspaper's children website, http://kidz.bdnews24.com, it added.

"This will give us a unique opportunity to take the children's stories from across Bangladesh to a huge number of audience," Toufique Imrose Khalidi, Editor-in-Chief of Bangladesh's first Internet newspaper, said in a statement on Wednesday.

"Being part of our already-popular http://kidz.bdnews24.com, the Children's News Service will get some natural advantage," he believed.

"We will train them, teach them the basics of journalism, create a manual for them to follow, hoping that many of them will become professional journalists in future."

Khalidi said such training would be organised in at least 20 districts initially and that bdnews24.com correspondents would be sensitised to the children's issues through workshops so that they could work as effective coordinators in their respective districts.

He added that bdnews24.com will continue the programme even after Unicef's partnership ends.

Unicef is considering the initiative as an opportunity for children to contribute in making a child-friendly news industry and for strengthening their rights.

"Around 45 percent of the population in Bangladesh are under 18. Unicef in partnership with bdnews24.com is keen to create a 'space' for children where they will be able to raise their concerns, share their aspirations for the future and contribute to decisions that affect their lives by suggesting solutions while playing an active role in mainstream media," said Unicef's Acting Representative for Bangladesh Michel Saint-Lot.

"We are hopeful that through this unique initiative, we will be able to hear the unheard voices of this nation, enable children to make a contribution to the news agenda and accelerate the process of upholding child rights for children in Bangladesh," Saint-Lot added.

The children will be responsible for the gathering of information, editing and publishing news under the supervision of bdnews24.com journalists.

bdnews24.com/rn/bd/1721h


No comments: