GNMI trains students in gender equality reporting at Shah Abdul Lateef University, Khairpur.
A training on gender sensitivity and gender equality reporting was conducted with media students at Shah Abdul Lateef University, Khairpur. Karachi-based NGO, Global Neighborhood for Media Innovation (GNMI), designed the day around the topic of ‘Blogging and Vlogging for Social Change and Impact: The use of digital media for addressing human rights and gender based violence,’ on the 25th of October, 2019.
The aim of the workshop was to initiate students in key gender issues, the difference between sex and gender and how to appropriately and ethically report on human rights stories and cases of gender based violence.
Najia Ashar, trainer and founder of GNMI tailored the day’s activities to accommodate over 70 students and offer them the opportunity to learn gender biases in every day media through applied knowledge. Ashar guided the participants as to how to create vlogs and news stories on their own smartphones and present them in a way that avoided outdated gender stereotypes and inappropriate reporting. The students were provided with real life case studies that were based on gender violence and human rights and asked to recreate them with journalistic ethics that they were trained in that day. The platform of blogging and vlogging was chosen as more and more organizations and individuals prefer independent channels of news making and news sourcing. In keeping with providing the students with access and information about new digital media tools, Ashar also combined lessons in media integrity in terms of gender sensitivity that is the need of the day.
“Media students today are the journalists of tomorrow and if we want to reshape the face of journalism to be more inclusive and respectfully represent members of our society we have to begin by teaching them what we know in the format they’re comfortable with. Hence we chose blogging and vlogging for this workshop and combined that with gender equality reporting for the optimum results,” the trainer said.
Media students at Shah Abdul Lateef University presented their vlogs in groups of 8 after taking the time to brainstorm and assign one another roles in the story they would be presenting. Some of the Vlogs were designed as highly professional and serious, others were comical and some were presented as simple social commentary or video podcasts. The presentations were impressive overall and the trainers as well as the VC of the university were able to provide valuable feedback to the participants on their Vlogs. The participants’ efforts were commended and their skills in editing, choice of background, props and script were adroit.
Students promised to continue working on stories of human rights interest and be mindful of the pitfalls of gender bias that is present in the media. GNMI and the university faculty also provided the participants with constructive feedback that they could use to improve their journalistic endeavors in the future.