::: Star Insight :::

Editorial

Time, a moving thing, only when we grow old do we start to understand it. Star Insight has reached its 7th year, now that I look back it amazes me that it's been 6 years since its been in circulation. If we look back at the 6 years and make a self assessment, what stands? Of course, it started with a dream, but unfortunately it wasn't fulfilled. You see, everyone has dreams, some of them are fulfilled and some aren't. I believe that the reason as to why Star Insight Magazine didn't live up to our expectations wasn’t because we weren't getting the go-ahead to expand or print more color pages and other similar things, but it was because of me. I should have given more effort, traveled more, and created a proper support team in order to live up to the tagline “Know Bangladesh Better”.

However, we should also look at Star Insight's achievements. It's not as if we haven't done anything worthwhile, even though all the constraints we have brought the unseen heroes of our land to the limelight. The word unseen is used mainly because these heroes of ours are unable to move forward in their lives, due to various reasons such as poverty, physical disability, location and discrimination. We publish their stories to make our readers aware of their difficulties, and in return our readers contact us and ask about what they can do to help them, and this has been going on for the past 6 years.

The most recent example of our heroes being helped took place last month in an issue published on 16 June 2012 which contained a feature called “Disabled Yet Meritorious”. Right after its publication, one of our readers took up the financial responsibility of Akhi till she graduates high-school.

If we go into detail about all the people that have been positively affected by Star Insight, we would have to publish a special issue. It is because of these people, we are thinking about setting up a 'trust' called “The Daily Star Insight Trust”. This 'trust' would ensure that all the people who need assistance would receive help and that the funds would be distributed evenly amongst the ones who need it most.

Star Insight's biggest achievement is probably its annual competition, called Celebrating Life. The Daily Star and Standard Chartered Bank's joint effort is on its 5th year. Celebrating Life proved to be a great platform for the youth of our nation to bring their creativity in forms of photography, lyrics and films. Over the years most of Celebrating Life's winners have reached unimaginable heights of success in their respective careers. Since last year Celebrating Life added a new segment to their usual contests – The Celebrating Life Film Making Workshop, which has been getting a lot of positive response. Soon, we hope that these men and women will go ahead to become renowned mainstream film makers and change the face of Bangladeshi cinema.

Zahidul Naim Zakaria, someone who had been working with Star Insight since 2006, recently decided to move on to other interests, but still contributes to the well-being of the magazine. Alas, the people of Star Insight will come and go; change is needed for them to follow their own career paths.

Since Star Insight will be starting its 7th year, we have decided to put in 7 short stories of 7 very promising writers of Bangladesh – Prasanta Mridha, Audity Falguni, Mahbub Morshed, Suvashis Sinha, Shahnaz Munni, Madol Hasan and Zakir Talukdar.

Celebrating the beginning of a new year for Star Insight Magazine, I would like to thank everyone who has contributed to the magazine: its readers, its staff and the unseen heroes of our land. Thank you all for being with us for the last 6 years; we hope to prosper for many years to come.

- Rafi Hossain
8th July, 2012