RAJSHAHI, March 28, 2021 (BSS) – Sensible and meaningful role of mass-media and other civil society organizations (CSOs) can be the effective means of ensuring inclusive governance everywhere in the society.
In the present social context, many of the media and CSOs are playing an important role in influencing policies and practices to make them pro-poor. Journalists and development activists came up with the observations while taking up discussions of a daylong ‘Governance and Inclusion Workshop with Journalists and CSOs’ at Hotel Warisan in Rajshahi city Saturday.
Counterpart International hosted the workshop under the Promoting Advocacy and Rights (PAR) Project with financial support of USAID and UKaid.
Some 15 journalists and five CSO people from Rajshahi and Natore districts joined the workshop. They were given ideas on how to express clear ideas about the importance of inclusion in democratic governance and work with civil society organizations for practicing in-depth public service journalism.
They also shared knowledge on how to select topics for media reports and stories on inclusion democratic framework, gender based violence, drug abuse and environmental pollution.
The meeting was told that the journalists and CSOs should come forward and work together to raise the level of awareness at household and community levels about the adverse consequences of drug abuse through social mobilization.
They can also play an important role to sensitize and influence local governments and politicians to introduce effective policy measures and increase allocation of resources to combat drug abuse.
Senior News Editor of Channel I Mir Masrur Zaman Rony facilitated the workshop as resource person with support of PAR Project Advocacy Specialist Iffat Jarin and Program Assistant Shormica Sharmin.
Light House Chief Executive Harun-Or-Rashid opened the workshop as chief guest, while Manager of Drug Abuse Resistance and Understanding- DARAU Project Monwar Hossain welcomed the participants and Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Coordinator Subrata Kumar Paul moderated the sessions.
Various issues related to importance of inclusion in governance, role of media in promoting governance and inclusion and covering governance and inclusion with a focus to initiate a change were discussed elaborately in the workshop. Some other topics on how to prepare stories and other write ups with a vision to enhance inclusion in governance, issue-based reporting and the importance of working in collaboration with journalists and CSOs also came up for discussion.