Media Literacy Education for Youth held

On June 19, the webinar of `What We Can Do for Peace: Media Literacy’ education was held online hosted by the Public Relations Department of Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL) and the International Youth Peace Group (IPYG) and participated with a lecturer Mr. Nabeel Tirmazi who is a Broadcasting Consultant & Programme Manager of Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (AIBD) and 40 youths and journalists from Bangladesh and Pakistan.

According to HWPL, an international peace organization affiliated with the UN ECOSOC, the Media Literacy education can promote the development of democracy and citizens` right to active decision-making through necessary knowledge and technical education so that citizens around the world can live as critical and active media consumers.

The first part of the lecture was titled "Media Literacy & Netizenship in the Age of Disinformation", and the second was titled "Media Literacy for Peace".

In February, Mr. Nabeel Tirmazi gave a presentation under the topic of "Media in the times of Infodemic" in an international webinar of Asian and African media hosted by HWPL. He insisted that the importance of media literacy education and the right netizenship to find and demand truth in his presentation.

Public Relations Department of HWPL mentioned, "Citizens should distinguish misinformation and disinformation through the ability of media literacy and get useful information from various media to make their life more positive and productive," and "Our lives can develop, and we can realize peace when the producers, consumers and distributors of the media play their roles correctly."

Mr. Mostafijur Rahman Nasim, Senior Editor of Risingbd said, “The number of online users didn’t cross check the information found in online. Even the smart people like students spread wrong or propaganda sharing or posting fake news and information. so, this kind of online awareness program can play a vital role.”

Mr. Abdus Sabur, Press Assistant Manager of Young Power Social in Action (YPSA) said, “It will be able to improve the democratic civic awareness of young people by understanding the new mechanism of the media through media literacy.” And “Bangladesh, the illiteracy rate is high and youth use a lot of social media. so, the media literacy education is essential for youth in this situation.”

In the future, to foster youth leadership with democratic communication skills, HWPL is planning to continue to provide media literacy education for South Asian youth organizations that seek true media and demand peace.