Digital literacy among young people is crucial to make Bangladesh progressive and tolerant, said State minister for ICT Division Zunaid Ahmed Palak at “Digital Khichuri Challenge” follow-up event, organized by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on 29 March in Dhaka.

Partnering with Facebook and Bangladesh ICT Division, UNDP initiated “Digital Khichuri Challenge” in 2016 in order to glean ideas from the youth with a view to building a more peaceful and tolerant society and promoting cultural diversity.

After three successful Digital Khichuri Challenge, an event was organized to share the learnings, challenges and finding the way forward. The winning teams from the past events presented the progress of their projects till to date. Among the winners;  ‘It's Okay Bangladesh’, a platform, created by the winners of Digital Khichuri Challenge 2016 is now providing mental support to distressed individuals, through the website: http://itsokaybd.com/. Another winning team Icarus started an online platform “Onimikh”- https://www.onimikh.com/ for young artists to promote Bangladeshi culture and heritage. Team “Bonshai” is now working on an automated online messenger app called Anu-Bot that will attend  to the problems of youths and provide  solution to manage their anger and stress.

Addressing the event as the chief guest, Zunaid Ahmed Palak assured the support from his ministry to continue their work. “Youths are the architects of Digital Bangladesh and the current government is always interested to invest in youth through initiatives, like Startup,” said Palak.

“Platform like Digital Khichuri, will help Bangladesh to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 16 -Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions,” said Kyoko Yokosuka, Deputy Country Director, UNDP Bangladesh.