On March 13, 2023, the Online Advocacy Toolbox (OAT) has been officially handed over from PAR to Young Power in Social Action (YPSA). YPSA has been maintaining the online advocacy toolbox (OAT) under PAR, but the contract between YPSA and PAR will end on March 31, 2023. As a result, a formal handover of the OAT to YPSA was scheduled on this day.
A total of 25 (13 women, 12 men) individuals participated in the event comprising of nine external CSO representatives from organizations such as Doorber network, Manab Pragati Shangha-Tangail, Taranga Mohila Kollyan Sangstha- Jamalpur, Human Rights Development Centre (HRDC), Bangladesh Centre for Human Rights and Development (BCHRD).
During the handover session, PAR provided background information and expectations about the OAT and YPSA gave a walkthrough of the site and provided a summary of their future plans (upcoming 6 months) with the OAT followed by an open discussion. After remarks from both YPSA and Counterpart International, the Chief of Party Mainuddin Ahmed announced the official handover of the OAT.
The event concluded with the following results:
- Forum membership: A large number of participants registered in the advocacy toolbox instantly upon a call for active participation.
- Promotion: External CSOs got orientation on OAT mechanism, and they promised to work in collaboration in terms of sharing their advocacy related contents and strengthening the OAT resource library to uphold Bangladeshi civil society’s activism.
- Recommendations: A good number of recommendations and suggestions were received from the open discussion and questions sessions which are listed below.
- Promoting OAT in district level NGO coordination monthly meeting considering the big platform of stakeholders (GO, NGO, INGO, UN etc.) where a short presentation on OAT can be shown to increase its branding (covering local geography) and resource mobilization.
- Attaching/linking individual CSOs website/page/contact with the content so that audience can know more of the content developer’s activities and work.
- Introducing automatic newsletters feature upon uploading any content to increase showcasing. Maintaining standard disclaimer to keep up the OAT goal and policy.
- Ensuring a designated review committee to avoid plagiarism and to fortify authentication, branding and marking, quality/standard of photo/video story.
- CSOs have been requested to share contents through management/upper-level correspondence so that content management can be easy and transparent in terms of avoiding anti-establishment, wrong and misinformation.
