Bangladeshi English newspaper The Daily Star won prestigious Asian Media Awards in “Best in Community Service” category today.

The Daily Star has won a bronze award in this category. This is for the first time that a Bangladeshi newspaper has won this esteemed award. The New York Times is a partner of the event.

The 17th edition of the Asian Media Awards, presented by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), attracted 435 entries from countries all over Asia and the Middle East. Fifty-eight media companies from 19 countries participated in the event.  

This year, the winners of Asian Media Awards were chosen from seven categories. Best in Community Service award measured how companies go beyond their traditional roles of educating and entertaining readers to become an active player in leading and implementing social service campaigns for the benefit of the community it serves.

The awards ceremony was presented during Publish Asia 2018 in Bali at the Westin Resort Nusa Dua.  

Md Tajdin Hassan, head of marketing, Shuvashish Roy, digital marketing manager, and Arafat Hossain, sr executive of The Daily Star, received the awards on behalf of the organisation.

The Daily Star received best in community service award for the project "Panir Golpo- The Tale of Water", a joint initiative with Unilever Pureit to create awareness and provide water purifiers to people affected by diarrhea in Kushtia region.

In early July, 2016, The Daily Star ran a report on the outbreak of diarrhea in Kushtia when around 2000 people were affected with the disease during the span of a week (July 20 - July 27).

Subsequently, Unilever Pureit joined hands with The Daily Star and formed a research team which went to the area to find out what went wrong. The team visited Kushtia and identified the worst affected areas and the field report concluded that some crucial factors contributing to the high prevalence of diarrhea are dirt and an unclean surrounding and a general lack of awareness.

To address this gap, The Daily Star and Unilever Pureit came forward with the initiative titled Panir Golpo to create awareness and provide water purifiers to people affected by the disease. A two-day awareness campaign was held in Kushtia on October 4-5, 2016. It helped fill in the gap of information on what preventive measures can be taken when dealing with problems of unclean water. They provided water purifiers to 100 underprivileged families. Through this timely intervention, people in Kushtia learned of the importance and ways of purifying water—whether by boiling water or using water purifiers.

This year it was WAN-IFRA’s 17th Asian Media Awards that aim to promote the highest publishing standards in the fields of newspaper and magazine design, infographics, printing, editorial content, marketing, community service and photojournalism. Hundreds of newspapers and magazines in Asia Pacific, South Asia and Middle-East have taken part in the competition over the last fifteen years, establishing the Asian Media Awards as the most prestigious recognition of excellence for the news publishing industry in the region.

Among the other winners are China Daily, The Straits Times Singapore, Daily Inquirer Philippine, India Today, Dubai Media Inc, The Hindu, etc.