Update on the media Centres of Excellence project

The GL media Centres of Excellence project has continued to gather momentum in the last few months with several media houses signing Memorandum of Understanding (MOUs) with GL. Following the planning and conceptualization meeting in May 2011, seven media houses in Tanzania have since signed MOUs. On the 9th of August, GL officially launched the COE project in Dar es Salaam where the MOUs were officially launched. This shows the level of commitment and buy-in to the project. In Botswana, two media houses have given full commitment to the process. In Mauritius, three media houses have also given their buy-in to the COE project.

The next phase of the project will involve a lot of backstopping with gender based violence workshops planned for October. Gender based violence is one of the SADC Protocol thematic areas that GL will train journalists on in the run up to the sixteen of activism campaign. Working in collaboration with local councils in the region, GL will train 20 journalists on covering gender based violence from a gender perspective as well as writing and documenting first-hand accounts of survivors of gender based violence in different localities in SADC.