This project is aim to help community to raise their issues by using social media through their young community leaders emerging as a community journalists, 15 young people as a citizen/community journalist using ICT & social media to create reports on their own community’s social, civic, environment & educational issues. This project aim to promote community involvement to highlight their issues by using non-conventional, accessible & modern alternative media & put pressure on authorities also prioritizes human rights issues in upcoming city government elections.
Topical focus:
Country:
What locality or neighborhood will your project focus on?
Hyderabad- Province Sinh
Describe the specific population with whom you will be working.
The 15 young people belong to far flung &different part of province Sindh in Pakistan (representation- 64% youth population of pakistan)
They represent marginalized rural/ semi urban communities, having access to computers, basic knowledge of ICT & journalistic potential. They will trained on different trades related to citizen Journalism including reporting, short film making, Radio, podcast, video, print, blog using soft skills and online technology & social media. Radio is highly accessible in rural part and social media reachable to major community stack holders, grass root democratic system never been institutionalized , this initiative will sensitize people to understand & highlight their issues, draw attention of concern authority & bridging gap b/w common man & government.
Who else will be on your team to help implement the project?
• Samreen Ghauri- myself, replicate my USA fellowship 2012, ICT course in 2010 learning for using multimedia in advocacy
https://www.facebook.com/samreen.USA.ghauri
http://samreenkhan.blogspot.com
• Ms. Rooma Naz (Executive Member –Shelter participatory organization)
She is youth activist and moderator of leadership training, she will assigned group formation and training arrangements and follow up activities, coordination and linkages development with media outlets
• Mr. Fida Baghath (Production controller- Media 360 company)
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Media-360-production/1438747486343390
He will be responsible to provide training of soft skills.
What kinds of news, stories and other content will be created?
• Audio packages for radio (local FM –City page & sound blogs-online radio)
• Blogs
• Articles & Letter to editor
• Record expression and opinion of people for podcast
• Short Video
• Sharing ideas, discussion and debate using social media
The overall goal of the project is to provide access to means of communication to the local communities who do not have access to mainstream media &to provide training to local youth on citizen journalism so that they can develop program/news stories & content of local interest and address issues related to youth, education, livelihood, missing and dismal civic facilities, inequality, social injustice, culture, sports and entrepreneurship as an outlet for the creativity and social mobilization within their communities.
What technologies and digital tools do you plan to use in the trainings?
Describe the connections that you or your organization have already established or plan to establish that will contribute to the success of the project.
I am Executive Director of the organization shelter participatory organization (SPO), the organization working in the community since 2004 and established grass root linkages, SPO has organized a large group of youth belongs to the community, SPO has conducted different training session for grooming youth groups, the need emerged from youth group to obtain skill for highlighting issues by using social media and become advocate of their communities.
In future, this trained youth group will be worked as a community leader/journalist to raise and advocate issues on behalf of SPO’s platform.
I am broadcast journalist and associated with radio Pakistan, collaborating and coordinating to broadcast news packages from young community journalist for city edition on FM channel.
How many participants do you think will be trained in your project?
A group of 15 proactive youth (Girls and Boys-gender balanced) belongs to community across province will be trained and groomed, this youth group will represent community population (approx: 3.5 million)
Project coordinator will engaged all participants to keep active, alert and mobilized through Skype meetings, SMS alerts &social media to bring best stories. Any potential story will be rewarded as to be broadcast from FM channel (City Bulletin)
Continue follow-up & refresher sessions also conducted to obtain best outcome from groomed & motivated young community journalists.
These 15 community leaders will further replicate theirs obtained skills & train at least 3 more young people from their communities.
Directly trained = 15
Indirectly/further trained = 45
Total: 60
Describe which technologies, tools, and media you will focus on when training participants.
The training will make use of computers with internet connection, digital recorder or mobile phone voice recorder, audio editing software (sound forge).
I have a skill of ICT tools using advocacy and fellowship experience of broadcast media,
The use of multimedia (one story – podcast, blog, broadcast) will be encouraged, for this usage of cell phones (voice recording, camera and internet service smart phone) will be used by community journalists. This training will explore and practice alternative media for advocacy.
Describe the facilities where you will hold the workshops.
The training will take place at the office of SPO resource center which have 10 computers and wireless internet. Two digital voice recorder and three digital cameras also on participants disposal, however, young community participants encourage to bring smart phone (possibly)so that their learning retaining community news on no-cost and using conventional methods and alternative media.
SPO resource center (reference material, newspaper, books, magazines, journals, audio/video archives) also provide facilitation to the participants.
What is your current relationship with the community with whom you plan to work? What makes you the most appropriate individual or organization to implement this project?
I am executive director of the organization SPO that leads many programs and initiatives for community development. Youth and marginalized people special focused of SPO working areas.
I belong to the community and know ground issues, challenges and working patterns with stack holders.
As well as being a broadcast journalist and a media fellow, I will replicate my learning, utilized skills, resources & linkages to groomed community journalists.
Community owned media model as I learned during my journalism fellowship & ICT course in Philippine 2010 on how to use ICT in advocacy will be definite advantage to accomplish this project with grace and dignity.
visit:
http://kutnews.org/post/pakistan-austin-power-radio-introducing-samreen-ghauri
What specific challenges do you expect to face when planning and implementing your project?
The cost of running the project is high however we would mobilize other resources and accomplish task in resourceful manners.
Security is a challenge in current Pakistan’s religious extremism in Socio-political landscape; as well some kind of difficulties will be expected during field reporting however precautionary measures will be adopted to overcome challenges.
How will you measure and evaluate the project’s impact, specifically: your primary participants, the wider regional community, or the global digital community?
The number of participants who complete the training and practice the learning
2. The number of stories coming from community journalist’s
3.Concern authorities will start pay attention towards issues raised by community journalists.
4. The level of use of multimedia in sharing stories & Interaction generated among different stack holders of community in our social media platform.
The production of community journalist dissemination & showcase through social media like YouTube, Vimeo, sound blog, twitter, and Face book would help in promotion of citizenship and bridge the communication gap. Relaying of video content through local cable operators would help local communities to remain updated regarding any issues related to their town and act to resolve collectively.
If your project were to be selected as a Rising Voices grantee, what would be the general timeline of project activities in 2014?
1 The number of participants who complete the training and practice the learning
2. The number of stories coming from community journalist’s
3.Concern authorities will start pay attention towards issues raised by community journalists.
4. The level of use of multimedia in sharing stories & Interaction generated among different stack holders of community in our social media platform.
The production of community journalist dissemination & showcase through social media like YouTube, Vimeo, sound blog, twitter, and Face book would help in promotion of citizenship and bridge the communication gap. Relaying of video content through local cable operators would help local communities to remain informed, act to resolve collectively. Act locally to perform globally, is a main punch of the project.
Detail a specific budget of up to $2,500 USD for operating costs.
Item number times rate Total
Communication & logistics 1 – – 400
Training manual/material printing 15 1 33 500
Training participant’s accommodation 15 5 days 15 500
Training participant’s meal 15 5 days 15 300
Follow up activates and coordination 20 – 4 500
Media coordination & field visits 10 – 3 300
US$2500
The participants will meet their transportation costs.
Besides the microgrant funding, what other support can Rising Voices provide for your project to ensure its success?
1. Share already existing training material and resource material
2. Soft skills of info- activism
3. Links to open source software for creation of digital content with ease
Final Thoughts:
The selected & trained young community journalists will regularly produce local media content & disseminate it through social media, local cable TV network. The media content will be monitored by the project team as well as regular feedback from local community and online subscribers, followers will be an effective monitoring tool to measure success of the project. Every trained citizen journalist will have to produce certain number of reports on community issues that will lead toward raising awareness, ownership and responsibilities service providers and stack holders.
Contact name
Ms. Samreen Ghauri
Organization
Shelter Participatory Organization (SPO) NGO
1 comment
Get ready to see most interesting news stories from community journalist…the stories never showcase on any media outlet…! Original & indigenous!