Star honoured for community service

The Daily Star, the leading English daily of the country, was honoured with a bronze prize from the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).

This is the first time that a Bangladeshi newspaper won this prestigious award from WAN-IFRA's Asian Media Awards. The daily won the bronze in the "Best in Community Service" category.

WAN-IFRA handed over the award to the representatives of The Daily Star during the Publish Asia programme yesterday in Bali at the Westin Resort Nusa Dua.

The Best in Community Service award measures how companies go beyond their traditional roles to become active players in leading and implementing social service campaigns for the benefit of the community they serve.

The 17th edition of the Asian Media Awards attracted 435 entries from countries all over Asia and the Middle East.

Fifty-eight media companies from 19 countries participated. This year, the winners of Asian Media Awards were chosen from seven categories.

The Daily Star received its award for the project "Panir Golpo- The Tale of Water", a joint initiative with Unilever Pureit, which aimed to create awareness and provide water purifiers to people affected by diarrhoea in the Kushtia region.

In early July, 2016, The Daily Star ran a report on the outbreak of diarrhoea in Kushtia when around 2,000 people contracted the disease during the span of a week.

Subsequently, Unilever Pureit joined hands with The Daily Star and formed a research team which went to the area to investigate the outbreak.

They identified the worst affected areas and concluded in their field report that some crucial factors contributed to the high prevalence of diarrhoea were dirt, unclean surroundings and a general lack of awareness.

To address this gap, The Daily Star and Unilever Pureit came forward with the award-winning initiative to create awareness and provide water purifiers to people affected by the disease.

A two-day awareness campaign was held in Kushtia on October 4-5, 2016. Water purifiers were also provided to 100 underprivileged families.

Md Tajdin Hassan, head of marketing, Shuvashish Roy, digital marketing manager and Arafat Hossain, sr executive of The Daily Star, received the award on behalf of the organisation.

This year was WAN-IFRA's 17th Asian Media Awards. The awards are aimed at promoting the highest publishing standards in the fields of newspaper and magazine design, infographics, printing, editorial content, marketing, community service and photojournalism.

Hundreds of newspapers and magazines in Asia Pacific, South Asia and Middle-East have taken part in the competition over the last fifteen years, establishing the Asian Media Awards as the most prestigious recognition of excellence for the news publishing industry in the region.

Among the other winners are China Daily, The Straits Times (Singapore), The Philippine Daily Inquirer, India Today, Dubai Media Inc, The Hindu, etc.

The New York Times was a partner of the event.