UNESCO Office in Windhoek 38-44 Stein Street, Klein Windhoek, P.O. Box 24519, Windhoek, Namibia
Humanitarian Reporting and Development Journalism Workshop, Cape Town , South Africa
UNESCO Windhoek Office conducted a 2-day training workshop on humanitarian reporting and development journalism for correspondents from five community radios in South Africa from 1-2 December 2014. The objectives of the workshop were to introduce participants to the MDGs and to show how South African has progressed in meeting the goals as well as to enable participants to come up with community-based stories from the MDGs.
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The methodology employed was participatory drawing from and reflecting on the experience of participants to share insights and new learning. During the morning of the first day, a presentation on MDGs was made to provide participants with background and essential information on the context of the workshop – what are the MDGs, when were they drawn up and by whom. South Africa’s status regarding attainment of the MDGs was also presented. The presentation was based on the 2013 MDG Country Report for South Africa. Participants examined closely the concept of average and how this tends to obscure the differences between. The discussion concluded on the importance of examining closely the differences and looking more specifically at what the national averages mean for the local community story.
The emphasis was on understanding the MDGs and how to translate those into real, concrete issues that affect ordinary citizens in our communities and how to link these issues to the bigger goals.
Participants were also introduced to the concept of development journalism. This was done through an article by Sue George of The Guardian on ‘What is development journalism? As issues facing the developing world grow ever more complex and difficult, the task of good journalism should be to throw light on them.’ This article is available at the following URL http://www.theguardian.com/journalismcompetition/professional-what-is-development-journalism
