A workshop on Community Journalism through Active Citizenship

Community journalism is a form of journalism which is considered as one of the most powerful and effective ways to foster the development process and the advancement of in the free flow of information in the community. Community journalism has the ability to get in touch with and draw out the actual situation and voice of the most disadvantaged, marginalized and vulnerable groups of society which include the poor, women and children.

Participants with certificates in hand after finishing the workshop

As an FK Fellow, I along with my country office Center for Human Rights Studies (CHRS) planned to develop a module on community journalism. After finalizing an outline and materials for the module we planned for a test workshop on the module. As planned during my home visit to Bangladesh in December we circulated and prepared for the workshop in January. Finally, with 27 local youth participants who really have enthusiasm in journalism and volunteerism the workshop on “Community Journalism” held at Halimpur Union Parishad, Kishoregonj, Bangladesh from 6-8 January, 2015.

Participants registering before the starting of the workshop

The objective of the workshop is enhancing the capacity and ability of the participants to different forms of media- print, audio or visual in community level. Along with this one of the main objective was to test the ongoing workshop manual, find out the opportunities for changing or reshaping the manual and finalizing it were also objectives of the workshop.

Chairman of Halipur Union Parishad visited the workshop

During the session of AKM Golap Mustafa

All three days, the workshop started at 9am in the morning and end up at 4.30pm in the evening. On the very first session of the workshop, Mr. Mofaq Kharul Taufiq, staff member of CHRS, welcomed all the participants in the workshop and gave a short introduction on CHRS and Betarbondhu, program co-organizer. Mr. Taufiq arranged some ice breaking and introductory games to make the participants more comfortable and energetic for the workshop.

Group exercise

 Later on the first day, there was discussion and activity on what is news, news and literature, basics of journalism and ethical issues of journalism, basic story elements- 5W, 1H. Mr. A K M Golam Mustafa, contributor and journalist of "The Daily Ittifaq" one of the oldest daily of Bangladesh came on the first day of the session and discussed about journalism and ethics of journalism from his own journalistic experience.

Group exercise

 On the second day of the workshop there was discussion about fact finding, interviewing and report writing. Participants got a very clear knowledge about how to conduct fact fact-finding and identify the sources of information in a prior time of fact finding task. Participants also told to prepare questions for the sources before going for their interview activity. Later on there was a role play session where participants given a situation and to have practical knowledge about fact-finding activity. Participants also wrote reports based on the information from the role play exercise.

Role play session of fact-finding

The last day of the workshop started with basic understandings on Human Rights. Mr. Farhadul Islam, Co-ordinator of CHRS, took the session. Later on participants were discussed about citizen journalism and community journalism in conjunction with their importance for the citizens and the community. On the last half of the day participants were familiar with social media tools like- photography, community radio and others. Participants also informed how we can use social media like facebook, twitter or blog and share our writings, reports and photos with a bunch of people around the country or beyond country.

One of the participant receiving certificate from the guest

The workshop ended with certifying all the participants of the workshop for their successful participation. Muhammad Farhadul Islam, Coordinator of Betarbondhu chaired the closing ceremony of the three days workshop.

[Another workshop for testing and finalizing the workshop will be conducted in Nepal before April 2015.]