Bidyanondo catches flak over 'misleading' social media posts
Bidyanondo began trending on social media early this morning after two posts made by the charity organisation came under intense scrutiny following what people said was a deliberate attempt to mislead.
Bidyanondo posted a photo collage of ornaments on their Facebook page, claiming those to be made from clothes burnt at the recent Bangabazar fire incident.
In another post, Bidyanondo showed a photo of a cow which the organisation claimed was a donation. The same photo of the cow had been used in an earlier post by the organisation for a different round of donations.
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Although the photo was the same, the captions were different.
For the first post of ornaments, Parvin Shirin, an entrepreneur, later posted some screenshots on Facebook showing that Bidyanondo had posted photos of her products.
"I posted the pictures of my products in the Women and e-Commerce Trust - WE group – on 9 March, long before the Bangabazar incident. And Bidyanondo posted today on 15 April using my pictures," reads Parvin's post.
Bidyanondo later removed the photo collage from their page and made a post apologising for their "mistake".
"Our project team downloaded several sample images from the internet to make ornaments from burnt clothes of Bangabazar. When sending images of products to the social media team, they mistakenly sent referential images from the internet," reads the post.
"The social media team created a collage of six pictures without proper verification and approval, where two pictures are of Bidyanondo but the remaining are pictures from the internet," it added.
When contacted on their hotline number, Faruque Khan, a volunteer of Bidyanondo, said they mistakenly posted collected photos from the internet on their Facebook page and the post was later removed when it came to their attention.
"A post with an explanation has been posted on our facebook page," he added.
He also said action has been taken against persons responsible for the mishap.
On the same photo of the cow, Faruque said Bidyanondo uses the same photo of a cow so that people will be encouraged to make similar donations.
