The ‘I Am the Bangladesh’ campaign, an online hashtag campaign initiated by SAVE Youth Bangladesh, started from 18 May, 2020. Around one hundred diverse young people directly participated in this campaign and have created ten digital contents so far. Through digital contents, we have countered hate speech in general, hate speech towards people of color, and faith based hate speech in particular.
The videos have been viewed a total of 40,000 times and counting, people have shared the videos more than 100 times so far and eight diverse young people took lead and created their own contents. In May, 2020, the SAVE Fellows, set out to deliver digital videos on raising public awareness about diversity, combating hate speech and building peaceful coexistence of diverse people by developing, and delivering an online hashtag campaign titled ‘I Am the Bangladesh’.
The objectives for ‘#IamtheBangladesh’ campaign were to deepen the understanding of diversity and tolerance towards diversity, combating hate speech and build peaceful coexistence, promoting active citizenship and engage young people in peace building and building youth resilience.
The primary audience were the public who use social media, mainly Facebook. Secondary audience include the family members and friends of social media user who do not have social media account.
Kazi Nayeem Siddiqee, a SAVE Youth leader, wrote that “Do you know how and when change begins? Yes, change begins when we all start working with the same motto in mind. I’m joining in this campaign to make a change. Are you also joining us on this journey to make a change?”.