The government of Israel, through specialised agencies, is currently sharpening the skills of media practitioners from across the globe on how they can better carry out their missions of informing, educating and sensitising their respective publics with the view of accelerating the political and socio-economic development of their countries.
An 18-day intensive capacity building workshop (November 1–18), organised by the Israeli Agency for International Development Cooperation (MASHAV) and the Golda Meir Mount Carmel International Training Centre (MCTC) in collaboration with the Israel National Commission for UNESCO is currently going on at the MCTC centre in Tel Aviv, Israel. The over 27 participants are coming from 17 countries with Africa represented by Cameroon, Senegal, Malawi, Ivory Coast and Kenya with one journalist each.
From the time the workshop rumbled off on Tuesday November 1, participants, in line with the workshop theme, “Media Strategies for Social Change” have been discussing the ethics of the profession, impact of the media in Israel, the place of the media in the development of any economy and social media as an instrument for social campaign, among others. Speaker after speaker have been emphasising on the need for collective development across the globe, which development they unanimously held, can be harnessed by an objective media. Addressing participants at the opener, the Director of MCTC, Mazal Renford, said Israel, is committed to the global agenda of sustainable development and poverty alleviation and their decision to work with local communities and organisations is to achieve that dream. “Israel is a laboratory for development. We share experiences and best practices for use by countries in the way convenient for them,” she said.
According to the workshop schedule, the participants are programmed to visit some touristic and religious sites in the country like Jerusalem, the Negev desert, the Dead Sea, Galilee as well as tour some media organs in Israel to get abreast with what they are doing to boost development.
Besides building the capacities of the journalists on well spelt out topics, the Tel Aviv workshop has also brought together the media practitioners from all areas of the profession, audiovisual and print, to share their experiences on other journalistic issues, practical skills, cultural issues and differences in communication, the new world information and communication order, differences in news values and how they relate to the Millennium Development Goals and development communication.
