Bangladesh NGOs Network awarded UN WSIS Prize

Community Media development-related ICT initiative of Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication (BNNRC) was recognised as a champions in prestigious UN World Summit on the Information Society (UN WSIS) Prizes 2021.

The award was distributed through an online platform from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) headquarters in Geneva of Switzerland on 19 May 2021, according to a press release.

The project that received the recognision is titled 'COVID-19: Education through Community Radio in Bangladesh under the UN WSIS category of 15: Cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity, and local content.'

BNNRC has been mobilising all community radio stations for broadcasting awareness-building programs on COVID-19 from March last year.

The initiative was to raise the awareness of the community people living in the rural areas from March in three phases including raising awareness on COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, to keep lives and livelihoods normal countering misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information and to protect the health of 1,000 broadcasters working with Community Radio.

The WSIS Forum represents the world's largest annual gathering of the 'ICT for development' multi-stakeholder community and is a global multi-stakeholder platform facilitating the implementation of the WSIS Action Lines for advancment of the sustainable development.

WSIS Prizes recognised remarkable efforts made by entities and organisations from around the globe that focus on accelerating the socio-economic progress of the whole world as a community.

Out of 1,270 nominated ICT success stories from around the world, following a comprehensive review by the Expert Group of 360 projects submitted by the WSIS Stakeholders' community for online voting, WSIS Expert Group has reviewed more than 1.3 million votes and finally selected 90 champion projects from all over the world.

BNNRC first won the WSIS Award in 2016 as the winner and champion of 2017, 2019, 2020, and 2021.

BNNRC has been chosen for this award on account of its creative thinking, critical analysis, strong media development leadership, and exceptional innovation of media and community media sector contributing towards voices of the voiceless people at national, regional and international level.