Sajeeb Wazed to hand over Joy Bangla Youth Award Tuesday

Prime minister's ICT adviser and CRI chairperson Sajeeb Wazed Joy will announce the Joy Bangla Youth Award 2020 winners through a virtual award-conferring ceremony on Tuesday.

Trustee of Centre for Research and Information (CRI) and state minister for power, energy, and mineral resources Nasrul Hamid will deliver the welcome speech.

The country’s biggest award, recognising the efforts of young visionaries to turn around their communities, will kick off at 8pm.

This year marks the fourth edition of the ceremony. The one-hour event will be aired live on three private television channels – Gazi TV, Bijoy TV, and ATN News – in addition to its broadcast on the Facebook pages of print, electronic, and digital media.

Since its inception in November 2014, Joy Bangla Youth Award, named after the historical pro-liberation slogan ‘Joy Bangla’, Young Bangla, the youth front of CRI, has been awarding youths and youth organisations whose vision and initiatives catalysed positive changes in society.

CRI, the ruling Awami League’s research wing, will air the event live on its Facebook page.

Between 2015 and 2018, Young Bangla awarded 130 youth organisations and many of the award recipients later poised themselves to work at a bigger scale owing to the networking they got endowed with through the platform.

Like previous years, Young Bangla received applications from more than 600 organisations run by youths aged between 18 and 35 for their services under the categories of women empowerment, children’s rights, empowerment of specially challenged and underprivileged people, youth development, empowerment of ultra-poor people, anti-drug awareness campaign, activities to deal with COVID-19, environment and climate change, renewable or green energy, healthcare, education and awareness, cultural initiatives, and disaster management.

At the first stage, the ‘Joy Bangla Youth Award’ will be conferred under six categories - women empowerment, children’s rights, empowerment of specially challenged people, empowerment of underprivileged people, empowerment of ultra-poor people, and youth development.

In the second stage, the awards will fall under the purview of seven sub-categories - anti-drug awareness campaign, activities to deal with COVID-19, environment and climate change, healthcare, education and awareness, cultural initiatives, and disaster management.

Young Bangla set off on 15 November, 2014, to directly incorporate the young generation in the country’s development activities geared towards ‘Vision 2021’.

The organisation, carried forward by 50,000 volunteers and 315 organisations, consists of nearly 300,000 members.