ISLAMABAD, Dec 10: International Children’s Day of Broadcasting (ICDB) is being celebrated on Sunday to encouraging young people to express their views and ensuring that their opinions are widely heard. “This is done by enhancing their access to the broadcast media and helping them master the technology so that what they create and produce can be shared with a mass audience”, said a press release issued by the United Nations International Children Educational Fund (UNICEF) here on Saturday.

This year’s theme ‘Let’s Play’ focuses on the role of sports and recreation in development and peace.

In Pakistan in past years Unicef encouraged broadcasters to celebrate the day by producing quality programmes for children and distributed some of them to the other countries.

The real thrust and significance of ICDB is to empower young people to determine the content and style of the productions — radio or television, that they want — and to have control of the entire process of production.

The youth not only come up with the ideas, they write scripts, work as technicians, direct, narrate and present the programmes.

Of Pakistan’s mass media, radio has huge potential, particularly in rural areas, to access the key youth audiences which Unicef is committed to reaching with messages about life skills, health, or HIV and Aids, it said.

Pakistan’s teenage (12-19 age group) makes up 27 per cent of the country’s total population and in a developing media environment, FM radio stations are increasing rapidly in all parts of the country as a popular and powerful channel for news and information dissemination, the press release said.

Radio was, therefore, selected for support by Unicef as the medium and a partnership established with Campus Radio FM-107, based at Peshawar University’s Mass Communication faculty.

The students have been working for the last few months with a pilot group of young broadcasters, 12 children aged 11-12, on a series of programmes.

The first of 6 programmes in the series entitled “Bazm-i-Naunehal, Azm-i-Naunehal”, (World of Children, Spirit of Children) airs at 5pm Sunday.

As thousands of young people have been radically transformed by October 8 earthquake, a key segment of the programme was recorded in the tented camp of Ghari Habibullah where 3,000 internally displaced people are living.