The Panos Institute Bangladesh organized an induction session of three media fellows on Wednesday 22 February at Brac Centre. Panos South Asia jointly with UNDP awarded fellowships to three print journalists to work on HIV/AIDS, Human Rights and Human Development. The selected fellows are namely, Shamim Al Amin, senior reporter of the Prothom Alo, Yasmin Reema, Comilla correspondent of the New Age and Naimul Haq, working formerly in the Daily Star. The fellowship will run till June 2006. In this in-country training workshop, the fellows worked directly with the key resource persons on HIV/AIDS in Bangladesh . Fellows presented three district level researches (Bogra, Khulna , Comilla) done recently by them around the fellowship topics based on a Panos guideline and got it reviewed. They jointly drew up their story-lines for their fellowship work.

Renowned HIV/AIDS experts namely Professor Nazrul Islam, chairperson of the virology department of the BSMMU, Dr Najmus Sahar Sadiq, assistant resident representative of the UNDP, Dr Julia Ahmed, deputy executive director of BWHC, and Afsan Chowdhury, director- advocacy and human rights of BRAC along with former Panos fellows and Brac field representatives discussed and reviewed the work of the fellows. Selected resource persons will form an advisory panel to work with the fellows during the course of the fellowship.

The aim of the fellowship is to enable journalists to better understand and explore HIV/AIDS as a major public health issue in respective countries, and its linkages to Human Rights and Human Development. This is part of a regional programme where fellows have also been selected in Sri Lanka and Pakistan through a very competitive process started last year. Fellows will get an opportunity to review respective work at the regional level. They will review their initial story ideas and publications jointly with an international steering committee, who will continue to advise journalists for the duration of the fellowships. More information about fellowship and Panos work can be obtained at www.panossouthasia.org .

Panos will provide fellows with substantive resource materials, information on relevant websites and contact details of NGOs and community based groups to help the journalists in their research. Fellows will be awarded a grant of 1000 US dollars each, plus travel and data collection expenses. They are expected to produce 5 (five) features of around 1000 words each for local media and another 5000-word article for a regional publication by Panos.

S. M. Mayeen Ahmed
Projects Officer-Bangladesh
Panos Bangladesh
House 3/8, Block F, Lalmatia, P.O. & P.S. Mohammadpur
Dhaka 1207, BANGLADESH
Tel.: (880 2) 9124522; Fax: (880 2) 8119774, attn. Panos
Mobile: (88) 0171544346 (active while in Bangladesh )
Email: mayeen@panossouthasia.org
URL: www.panossouthasia.org