Graduating and navigating the start of your career can be daunting even under normal circumstances. The Covid-19 pandemic added more challenging aspects to this experience. The mental toll of taking on a job for the first time amidst a pandemic has weighed down on many young individuals.

‘Find Your Bangladesh’, an online competition organised by Finding Bangladesh and supported by The British Council Bangladesh, aimed to engage and mentor the youth, on their historical roots. This team based competition, asked each team to identify a historical site in Bangladesh that is being slowly lost with time. The teams set out to find creative ways to better promote, protect, and preserve the location, and in the process learn its related histories, mythologies, legends, and the socio-cultural importance of the site.

Following the theme, A(ma)r Bhashay A(ma)r Bishsho, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB) recently concluded their three-day celebrations of International Mother Language Day. The programme was inaugurated by Professor Jahirul Haque, Vice Chancellor, ULAB. During the first day, the organisers conducted a video screening of letters written to mothers in 21 different languages and shared an audio-play entitled "Kajol" from Kolkata. This was followed by an interactive session on German tongue twisters and superstitious beliefs.

In 2017, Orni Hasan found a disheveled kitten around Dhanmondi Lake, deciding to keep him. Before the decision, she looked for safe adoption options, but could not find any.

Sazia Mehnaz, a former student of the Department of Linguistics at Dhaka University, recently won an international award for her research work on the Bengali language.

In recent years, the University of Sussex has become one of the most popular choices for Bangladeshi students planning to study in the UK. Sussex, which celebrates its 60th anniversary this year, is currently home to approximately 50 Bangladeshi students, who study a range of subjects, from Engineering to Law to Business.

February 21, the International Mother Language Day, is celebrated with the highest honour nationwide. Millions of people, young and old, gather at the Shaheed Minar to honour our language movement martyrs. This year was no different. Keeping safety guidelines in mind, young children, artists and students, along with their friends and family, gathered at the Shaheed Minar to commemorate the day.

Celebrating linguistic and cultural diversity, we should remember to continue making good use of language not just in literature but also in our day-to-day lives. One way to celebrate the beauty of language is to reclaim the art of writing letters.

Celebrating 50 years of the independence of Bangladesh, The Daily Star recently launched ‘Muktijuddho Olympiad’, in partnership with food-tech company efood. It is the largest Olympiad based on the Liberation War of 1971.

National Child Forum (NCF) is an organisation for children by children, which aims to ensure children’s rights in every sphere, guaranteeing child safety and promoting positive leadership.

I still remember how there was so much commotion around the language issue in East Pakistan right after the 1947 Partition. In 1948, Liaquat Ali Khan brought amendments that sought to make English and Urdu the lingua franca of Pakistan, even though a majority of Pakistan’s population spoke in Bangla.

What started as a group of seven boys from South Korea with big dreams but only a handful of fans has amassed today into the global phenomenon known as Bangtan Sonyeondan (BTS) with millions of admirers from all over the world. BTS’s fanbase, known as ARMY (short for Adorable Representative MC for Youth), are often misjudged for being immature and toxic due to the lack of proper media representation.

Youth School for Social Entrepreneurs successfully ended its flagship event Bangladesh Youth Symposium 2021. This time the event was held virtually through the videocall platform Zoom, in association with Northern University on Friday 12th February, 2021.

The pandemic has affected all aspects of life but the education system continues to be severely impacted into its second year. With educational institutions shutting down, students have been detached from the learning process and this is believed to hamper their progress in the long run.

During the 53 days that journalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol spent in enforced disappearance and the additional seven months of imprisonment, the movement for his release was fuelled by the most part by his unrelenting son, activist Monorom Polok.

This year, Space Apps declared challenges in 7 different categories: observe, inform, sustain, create, confront, connect and invent your own challenge. Under the category "Connect", one of the sub-categories was "Orbital Sky", where the winner was team BUET Zenith from Bangladesh.

For the first time in Bangladesh, Ho Chi Minh Islam and Tashnuva Anan Shishir, two transgender women, received scholarships to pursue higher studies in an international platform of BRAC James P Grant School. The scholarships were awarded to them in two categories to pursue higher studies in the Master of Public Health (MPH) programme.

I still remember the first day that I stepped into the campus of Notre Dame University Bangladesh (NDUB), not only because it was wonderful, but also because I came across an eighty-five year old, wearing an antique white helmet and a beautiful smile, riding his white vintage vespa. Rev Fr Joseph Stephen Peixotto, CSC, or as I address him, Fr Joe Peixotto, when I first met him, was the treasurer of the newly established university, built on the shoulders of Notre Dame College (NDC).

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APON Foundation, a government approved charitable organisation, was formed in 2006, with the aim of facilitating education for