Mehreen Fazal’s Alumni Small Grant (ASG) titled, “Stand Up, Speak Up: Countering Digital Harassment through Digital Storytelling’ concluded in a virtual closing ceremony on March 5, 2021. Mehreen is our SUSI alumna, an M.Phil Scholar and visiting faculty member at FAST University, Islamabad. Under her project, she carried out a series of online sessions on ‘Digital Harassment, Fake News, Online Privacy and Digital Storytelling’ virtually. Under this initiative, 30 female participants from different regions of Gilgit Baltistan have been trained virtually.

The training participants shared their post-training feedback as well. One of the participants Kiran said, “After this session, I cross-verified an image using ‘Google Reverse Image Search’ to check if my younger brother was following an authentic news or not. As anticipated, it turned out to be a fake news.” Another participant Pariyal shared, “I made an account on Fiverr and I am looking forward to utilize my skills on this online platform”. Ramish was of the view, “I am a member of an organization and I have pitched them this idea of raising awareness amongst teenagers about digital harassment and online earning platforms”. Overall, all the participants admired the great potential of digital storytelling and termed it as an inclusive process for such sensitive issues.

Project Lead Mehreen Fazal shared, “Although virtually executing this project was challenging but the dedicated team members and cooperation of participants made it possible and successful”. She further added that with the help of project’s dedicated website, she aspires to reach out to over 35,000 young girls from the various communities of Gilgit Baltistan virtually. Representative from PUAN management also attended the virtual closing ceremony and commended Mehreen’s efforts for working on this much-needed theme.