UNFPA honours crusaders of the gender issue

Clearly, women and gender-related concerns take up prime space among the most important concerns of development administration in India today. Against this backdrop, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), India and Population first strive to empower women to make informed choices on reproductive health, including maternal health, as also that gender issues are fully incorporated into the think-tank.

The duo has also instituted the UNFPA-Laadli Media Awards for gender sensitivity that honours individuals and institutions working in this field and helps further the cause constructively. An eminent panel of judges from various creative fields judges the awardees for the UNFPA-Laadli Media Awards, region-wise. The Northern Region's list of awardees was announced recently.

The Northern Region had 22 winners who were felicitated at a function held at Samanvay Bhavan, Bhopal recently. The winners, chosen in different categories, came from Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Chattisgarh, and UTs Chandigarh and Delhi. The awardees were honoured by the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, Shri Shivraj Singh Chouhan. The guest of honour was the Minister of Health, Shri Anup Mishra in a grand function organized on the occasion.

NDTV Delhi's Sutapa Deb, Hemant Panigrahi of Zee 24 Ghante from Chhattisgarh, Divya Shah CNN IBN, Delhi, Archana Sharma, Lok Sabha Television, Delhi, and Richa Anirudh, IBN7, Delhi were the winners chosen from an array of interesting selections in the electronic medium category.

In the print media category Rajesh Mali (Dainik Bhaskar, Bhopal), Shuriah Naizi (Gulf News), Nusrat Ara (Urdu), Multiple publications, Mohammad Anisur Rehman Khan (Urdu), Multiple publications, Jagtar Singh Bhullar (Punjabi, Rozana Spokesman, Chandigarh), Sukhbir Siwach (The Times of India, Chandigarh) and Annapurna Jha (UNI,Delhi) and Geetashree (Hindi), Outlook, Delhi were among the awardees in this category.

Not to be left behind, the digital front also bagged awards with Smriti Joshi of webduniya.com, Vibha Rani of chhammakchhallokahis.com and Afsana Rashid of thewip.com had their efforts crowned in the web category.