A certificate giving ceremony was held during the Human Rights Actors’ Conference organized by Ain o Salish Kendra at Liberation War museum’s auditorium on 5 December 2019. The certificates were handed over to the fellows by Sheepa Hafiza, Executive Director, Ain o Salish Kendra; Dr. Hameeda Hossain, Founder Member, Ain o Salish Kendra; Eiko Narita, Deputy Country Representative, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA); Khaleda Khanom, Team Leader, ASTHA project, Ain o Salish Kendra; Asha Mehreen Amin, Senior Deputy Editor, Editorial and Opinion, The Daily Star.

To receive the certificate, fellows from the Journalist Fellowship Programme: A.S.M. Atiqur Rahman, Senior Correspondent, NTV; Banani Mallick, Staff Reporter, The Daily Observer; Abu Kalam Azad, Sub-editor, Dhaka Tribune; Zahidur Rahman, Sub-Editor, Daily Samakal; Md. Kamrul Hasan, Staff Reporter, Dhaka Tribune; Syeda Farzana Zaman Rumpa, Assistant Feature Editor, Bdnews24.com; Nilima Jahan, Reporter, The Daily Star; Md. Sharful Alam, Senior Reporter, ATN Bangla; Md. Shafiullah Sumon, Sr.Reporter (News), BTV             were present.

ASTHA project launched the Journalist Fellowship programme with 17 selected journalists on the month of September this year with a 2-day interactive workshop on gender sensitive report writing and understanding gender and gender-based violence issues. Following the workshop, a 2-day long field visit was conducted at different project areas where the journalist talked with the survivors, service providers and community people to gather experience and news information on varies issues related to gender-based violence.

After completing the field visit, all the fellows published news on different issues such as: gender discrimination, domestic violence, campus sexual harassment, child marriage, child rape, marital rape, cyber sexual harassment, men’s involvement in reducing gender-based violence, necessity of rape law, social stigma around reporting the violence issues, multi-sectoral services to address violence against women, gender insensitive presentation of women in media and so on.

ASTHA project is implemented by Ain o Salish Kendra with the technical support from UNFPA and funding from the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (EKN).