Dhaka: A school-level campaign, titled ‘Red Card Campaign’, begins in 65 upazilas on Wednesday, aiming to raise awareness among students, teachers, guardians, and community people against early marriage and sexual harassment.

The Upazila Governance Project (UZGP) will run the campaign at 195 high schools under 65 Upazila Parishads (UZPs) of selected seven districts and expected to mobilise around 150,000 high school students, teachers, guardians and community people to fight the issues.

The seven districts are Kishoreganj, Brahmanbaria, Sirajganj, Khulna, Barguna, Sunamganj and Rangpur, said a UNDP media release.

The European Union (EU), Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC), UNDP and UNCDF are providing technical and financial support to the project being implemented by the LGD.

The campaign will be kicked off with Jamtoil Dhopakandi Girls’ High School at Jamtoil Union Parishad (UP) in Kamarkandi upazila parishad, Sirajganj.

As part of the campaign, the schools will hold daylong workshops and discuss with students, teachers, guardians, government officials, local opinion leaders and community people the consequences — reproductive health, social and mental risks— of the early marriage and sexual harassment, and find ways out of the social menace.

The UZGP has prepared a red card with slogans against early marriage and sexual harassment and two hotline numbers of Upazila Nirbahi Officer (UNO) and Vice-Chair (female) of Upazila Parishad (UZP) to seek help from local administration to prevent the social ills.

The red card will be distributed among the students during the workshop and they will take oath to fight against the issues.

A complaint box will also be set up in each school in addition to forming a school-level prevention-committee to address the social ills.

In 2015, the UZGP carried out the same programme in 130 high schools under 65 Upazila Parishads of selected seven districts and mobilised 1.3 lakh community people to combat gender-based violence.