GP-Brac campaign on safe internet for students begins today

Grameenphone and Brac will start running a campaign from today to create awareness among school students on the safe use of the internet and on making the right decisions while interacting and engaging in cyberspace.   

At a press conference in Brac Centre Inn in Dhaka, the organisations announced plans to reach 50,000 students in about 250 secondary schools in towns and remote areas by December. Grameenphone's 20 trained personnel and a Brac team will organise sessions on safe internet use while distributing guidebooks at the schools.

Mahmud Hossain, chief corporate affairs officer at Grameenphone, said it was the fourth time the mobile operator was running the campaign, which was launched in 2014 and so far reached 80,000 children in 500 schools around the country.

“The whole world is seriously facing cyber bullying and cyber security crises but in our country we cannot run sufficient awareness programmes to face these challenges,” he said.

Asif Saleh, senior director for strategy, communication and empowerment at Brac, said youths were now simultaneously running between “a golden age of digitisation” and “nightmares”. This challenge is not limited to urban areas as rural teenagers are also facing the same types of problems, he said.

Saleh said, though schools have computer labs, youngsters were facing challenges in practical life as security and awareness were not enough. Hossain said, being a digital service provider in Bangladesh, Grameenphone considers it a responsibility to ensure that people, especially children, get the best of the digital technology.

“We believe that spread of the internet and its benefits among people will help in reducing inequality,” he said.

Grameenphone and its parent company Telenor Group selected child safety online as part of their activities to support the sustainable development goals declared by the United Nations, he said.