FINDING YOUR VOICE

Voiceless Bangladesh (VB) is a project initiated by Naima Alam, lecturer, Media Studies and Journalism Department in ULAB (University of Liberal Arts, Bangladesh), to teach her students Public Relations in a rather unique way, working with social issues.

The objective of the project is to get students to learn to develop a social awareness campaign using a real project and issues that they want to talk about, get people to continue the conversation about these issues, even after the artists are gone, and to inspire a few 'Voiceless Bangladeshis' to start their own conversation through Wall Murals that tell their story.

"I have realised that university students learn more by doing," says Naima Alam. "That's why when I had to design a curriculum for my 'Introduction to Public Relations (PR) Course' I decided to take a project based learning approach.". Each semester, students plan a social awareness campaign and the final message is shared with the audience in the form of an elaborate wall mural.

Every day, students realise how much of the world is out of their control and they are constantly looking for a platform to speak out, raise their issue, and leave their mark. "So the VB project is a platform for the students to create awareness campaigns and leave their mark," says Naima. The project was inspired by graffiti artists like Banksy, who have been using walls to question our ideals and belief systems, and by 'The Ugly Indian' project, where a community gets together to clean up their city one street at a time.