Media and Development

Welcome,

this is the blog of the Project Development Team of Deutsche Welle Akademie, Germany’s leading media development organisation.

The aim of this blog is to inform about projects, activities and toughts, to communicate in an uncomplicated  maner, to get feedback, to discuss media development related issues and to share ideas. The blog is dedicated both for for team members and interested public.

MFW4A turns Journalisme Financier

Le blog de l'atelier sur la micro-finance

A Deutsche Welle Akdemie-Team is currently running a 3-week workshop on financial journalims in Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso. Having participants from Benin, Niger and Burkina Faso, the workshop aims at both enhance the knowledge of  instruments and systems of micro-finance to reduce poverty and to strenghten skills of financial journalism in radio, TV and online media among 15 journalists from the region. The workshop is financed by the European Commission, the overall objective is to foster acces of poor to financial products trough better information about the potential of micro-finance products in local media. Here is the blog Journalisme Financier.

The workshop is the french version of Making Finance Work for Africa (MFW4A) workshop, held earlier in Zambia and Ghana. A portugese version of the workshop will be held in Maputo from 03. to 19. of november. Visit the MFW4A website

Une équipe de la Deutsche Welle Akademie est actuellement à Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso pour organiser un atelier sur le journalisme financier. Les 15 participants viennent du Niger, du Benin et du Burkina. Ils représentent des radios, des Télés et des médias en ligne. Le but de cet atelier est de renforcer en même temps la connaissance du secteur de la micro-finance et la capacité de reporter des sujets financiers pour les groupes cibles de média respectives. Le but général du project est de donner aux populations puavres plus d’access aux informations concernant les possibilités des instruments de micro-finance a travers des médias locales. Voici le blog de l’atelier.

Deutsche Welle Akademie (DWA) has signed a grant contract with the European Commission for the 3-year project ‘Media in Zimbabwe: Key Factor in Promoting Human Rights and Freedom of Expression. Strengthening Media Reform and Civil Society Transition in Zimbabwe’ on Friday, the 3rd of September 2010 in Harare. The European Commission is co-funding the project with 1.1 million € from its Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR).

Deutsche Welle Akademie (DWA) has signed a grant contract with the European Commission for the 3-year project ‘Media in Zimbabwe: Key Factor in Promoting Human Rights and Freedom of Expression. Strengthening Media Reform and Civil Society Transition in Zimbabwe’ on Friday, the 3rd of September 2010 in Harare. The European Commission is co-funding the project with 1.1 million € from its Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR).

EC and DW-Akademie on Contract for Major Media Project in Zimbabwe

The projects overall objective is to promote freedom of expression and respect of human rights in Zimbabwe by facilitating the process of media reform. To achieve this objective the project aims at strengthening and expanding the efforts carried out by Zimbabwean media outlets and media support organizations through existing networks, especially through the members of the Media Alliance of Zimbabwe (MAZ). Project activities will be carried out in the following four areas: legal reform, institutional capacity building, professionalization of the media sector as well as strengthening links between the media and civil society.

The project has an overall budget of 1.3 million € and will be implemented by Deutsche Welle Akademie in partnership with four Zimbabwean media organisations and networks (Voluntary Media Council VMCZ, Media Monitoring Project MMPZ, Africa Community Publishing and Development Trust ACPDT and Zimbabwean Union of Journalists ZUJ) as well as with five European media development organisations (International Media Support IMS, Press Now, Institute for War and Peace Reporting IWPR, International Federation of Journalists IFJ and FOJO).

The UNESCO’s International Programme for Development of Communication (IPDC) is associated with the project.

Deutsche Welle Akademie (DWA) is Germany’s leading media development institution and part of its international broadcaster Deutsche Welle. DWA runs more than 100 media support projects yearly, mainly in Africa, Asia, Central Europe, Latin America and in the Middle East.

PD-Team growing

The project development team of Deutsche Welle Akademie is growing.  Since we won grants for an election reporting project in Rwanda, a Human Rights project in Turkmenistan and a multi media workshop in financial reporting, more staff have joined the Team:

Martin Hilbert is on board as project manager since June. Welcome Martin! Martin is an experienced TV trainer and a former TV Journalist and Camera Operator, having his own production company in Cologne. Martin has done a lot of film projects mainly for big public braodcasters in the past and he has traveled tricky parts of the world, like Iraq, Yemen, Soudan doing training for TV-Staff under difficult conditions for DW-Akademie.

Now at PD-Team Martin is in charge of  the implementation of various projects: He is organising the EC-funded election reporting project in Rwanda and he is peparing the media component of our capacity building project for Human Rights organisations in Turkmenistan. Moreover he is supporting Yinka in the coordination our famous www.east4south.org project.

Lina Hartwieg has joined the team as trainee for the month of august. She is following the International Master Studies in journalism at Deutsche Welle Akademie and supporting Yinka in organising upcoming modules of www.east4south.org.

Christian Berglar also has joined the team for the next four months. He is a Lund/Sweden University fellow and studying communication science. Christian will be in charge of our activities at the 2010 edition of the European Development Days (EDD) to be held 6th and 7th of december 2010 in Brussels. As to the 2009 edition of EDD, we will bring a group of African journalists to the event in cooperation with Directorate General for Development of the European Commission (DG Dev) and we will host some events promoting media development during EDD.

Check out our 2009 media and development panel at www.dw-akademie.de/developmedia

Istanbul and East4South

Well, crazy week. I was stuck 3 days in Istanbul cause of chaos in sky over europe. Well there are worst places to be grounded for some days. Internet working part-time at the hotel, some work could be done in the meanwhile. Mainly the fact that the meeting of the european partners in the ZImbabwe project planned for last week wasn’t possible becauise of flight cancelations caused problems. If not, we are preparing the first module of the Esast4South project form 08th of May in Brussels. Mainly the Visa issues are tricky somehow. We have to explain to Belgian embasssies in eight different sub-saharan countries why they should give visa for Brussel based workshop organized by a German organisation?! Schengen is a challenge when you are outside of it. But I’m hopeful that we can have everybody on board in time and start with all 20 participants in May.

DW-Akademie attends AU-EU expert meeting in Addis Ababa

DW-Akademie attend a two day informal expert meeting of media and development, co-organised by AU-Commission and EU Directorat General for Development. The meeting in Addis was the follow-up of the media a´nd development forum 2008 in Ouagadougou www.media-dev.org

This time the proposal of a Media Observatory, which could serve as a mediation institution was discussed and also the possibility of a Panafrican Media Portal and a Panafrican Media Network. AUC-President Jean Ping attend the meeting with around 50 media experts for more than two hours for very open discussions. The Observatory project was rather rejected by the experts however the constructive talks with representatives of EU and the communication unit of AU ended up fruitful by identifying other ares of intervention for a substantial contribution of the AU to media development in Africa. The posibility of a panafrican media consultative group to the AU has been intesely discussed.
Find the speech of AUC-President Jean Ping on www.african-union.org

Sudan Training Project Reaches Next Evaluation Step

The training project for loacal radio journalist, DW-Akademie and Partner Sudan Catholic Radio Network (SCRN) submitted to the European Commission Delegation, has been short-listed.

The project’s overall objective is to strengthen the role of civil society in Southern Sudan through
facilitating peaceful reconciliation, political participation and public dialogue by promoting independent
and professional media. The work of professional media and the effective practice of the freedom of expression are pre-conditions for the development of a democratic pluralistic society.

Within this context, the project will focus on radio reporting. The project is designed to support the regions and in particular remote areas.  The first specific objective is to professionalize reporters, editors and programme managers through an extensive and integrated training scheme. A major objective will be to raise the journalists’ awareness of
their role and responsibility for the common good. Apart from that, professional skills and standards will
be at the centre.

New PD-Team Staff-Member: Welcome Jana!

Jana Pareigis will mainly work on the Zimbabwe project with us. Jana has just finished the traineeship programm with Deutsche Welle and she brings sound experience in journalism and in the region. Welcome on board! Check what her colleague Nina Funke-Kaiser wrotes about Jana:

If there was one question in the selection procedure for the Deutsche Welle traineeship that Jana Pareigis could answer in her sleep, it was this: who is the head of state of Zimbabwe? After all, the 27-year-old lived there herself for a year and a half.

Although born and bred in Hamburg, she has traveled the length and breadth of Zimbabwe and also spent six months in London. After graduating from high school, she started work in a development aid center in Harare.

After that she did a practical placement with a foundation and wrote articles for a newspaper. On her return to Germany, Jana started studying political science and Africa studies in Hamburg. But it wasn’t long before Jana felt the urge to seek out the focal point of African diaspora studies, and she set off to spend a year in New York, where she also completed a practical placement in the Peacekeeping Department of the UN. Back in Germany again, Jana got a job at the TV broadcaster N24 in Berlin as an assistant to the editor-in-chief. She spent three years experiencing the excitement of a parliamentary news department, completed her degrees and found a practical placement at Reuters.

Jana has great appreciation for Deutsche Welle’s international orientation and diversity of topics, as well as the work the DW AKADEMIE does abroad. Already a trained coach in antidiscrimination, intercultural communication and diversity management, perhaps she too will one day teach young journalists in Zimbabwe about the importance of media freedom.

Development Project for Nepalise Radio Network submitted

In partnership with ACORAB, the Nepalise Network of local radio stations, PD-Team jointly with Asia-Team of Deutsche Welle Akademie submitted a project to the Delegation of the European Commission in Katmandu.

The project aims to strengthen ACORAB as a service provider for it’s members in technical support, programme-exchange database, cultural archive, training, programming consulting and information sources. In a second step the projects targets a masterplan for the regionalisation strategy of ACORAB and aims support the setup of decentralized service centres in 5 regions of Nepal.

The project should strengthen local media both as important civil society actors and social dialogue instruments in the framwork of the protection of human rights, participation of social groups -including minorities and other underrepresented groups- in political dialogue and decision making.

east4south.org is launched

east4south, the awareness rasining project of Deutsche Welle Akademie (DWA), Prospective Internationale (PI) and European Journalism Centre (EJC) has now its one website online. Ok, it’s only the “beta-version”, however, thanks to Arne and Biba, who did it. Middle of march, the new version of the website will be launched; more information on media and development on it, more dialogue opts and more multimedia, of course.

coming soon: 3 year media development project for Zimbabwe

DW-Akademie and 10 partners from Zimbabwe and Europe implements a 3 year project for media support in Zimbabwe.
The project is co-financed with 1,2 M. Euro by EC’s EIDHR programme.