Bangladesh is facing huge challenges in freedom of expression, justice, rule of law, and governance, in particular. Society is completely divided and hates speech and mis/disinformation is pervasively spread, particularly, by the fundamental religious groups and divided youth groups along with political fronts. There are instances of fatal violence in Bangladesh in recent years against other religion which begun due to propaganda news and misinformation spread online through social media.

In such situation, our objective was to build an online youth activist group including youth, journalists, social activists, women and minority activists, netizens, young artists, writers, bloggers, filmmakers, photographers, cultural activists and university students through a Capacity Building Program, so that this group can engage themselves to build a unique online platform to counter hate speech and spread of misinformation. And facilitate the youth group to actively engage them for advocating on counter hate speech and spread of misinformation online and promote responsible use of the internet. 

This Capacity Building Workshop was facilitated and attended by Mr. Mainuddin Ahmed, Chief of Party Bangladesh, Counterpart International; Ms. Sharmin Khan, Legal Consultant at International Center, Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL) and Ms. Shameem Ara Sheuli, Program Manager, Internews Network; as special guest. This workshop was facilitated by Siam Sarower Jamil, Senior development activist; Saimum Reza Piyas, Senior Lecturer, BRAC University; Sakira Parvin, Senior Lecturer, Stamford University Bangladesh; Ahmed Swapan Mahmud, Executive Director, VOICE; Zayed Siddiki, Project Coordinator, VOICE; Abtab Khan Shawon, Media Manager, VOICE; Nahian Ahmed Shah, Program Officer, VOICE.

This workshop provided hand on training on concepts of human rights, idea of hate speech and rumors, harmful effects of hate speech and misinformation, mobile journalism, social media and fact checking, social media campaign. Besides extensive surveillance and the right to security of personal information, fourth industrial revolution and democratic values these topics were discussed among young peoples in details.

This hands-on training helped them to create countering hate speech poster and infographic, case study on hate speech cases, social media contents for awareness, mobile journalisms videos and fact checking issues and how to apply them. Another focus of this training was to make understand this young changemaker about responsible use of internet. Using the Internet responsibly is to use its resources to help develop into a better person. The information you provide should build you up, encourage you, and provide a means to help others. It should not tear you down or make any kind of violence. End on this training participants were able to make some output based on topics. Output from participant would be uploaded in counterhatespeech.net website on a continues process and this website is dedicated to workshop participants output only.