Uks Workshop for Media Practitioners
July, 2016
Funded by AAWAZ Response Fund

Project – Giving Voice to the Voiceless

Participants – 21

Trainer/Facilitator – Nabeela Aslam

Two workshops were held as ToT workshop for media practitioners from districts of D.I.Khan, Haripur and Charsadda on Gender Sensitive Reporting on Violence against Women. The journalists were from various local and national news media houses – both print and electronic. The objectives of the training include:

  • Awareness-raising on VAW prevalence in the three districts
  • Awareness-raising on Laws on VAW as per each province
  • Analyses of VAW reporting trends
  • Ethics and sensitive reporting on VAW
  • Reporting Government’s Adherence to International Commitments (CEDAW, UDHR, SDGs etc.’)
  • Reporting on existing legislation in each province

November 2015 – January 2016

Funded by National Endowment for Democracy (NED)

Project – Gender Just Media Drive

Participants – 225

Trainer/Facilitator – Safi Ullah Gul (Peshawar), Nabeela Aslam (Islamabad), Kaleem Ullah Baloch (Turbat), Tariq Hussain (Gilgit Baltistan), Imrana Komal (Multan), Zia Ullah Hamdard (Mardan), Jibran Zaib (Hyderabad), Kiran Qasim (Gilgit Baltistan), Nasir Mehmood (Karachi), Shahzad Baloch (Quetta)

The ten trained journalists from each province were to train their colleagues and media practitioners – at least 25 – at their local press clubs. Uks engaged journalists and media organizations through trainings focused on understanding and utilizing a gender-sensitive code of ethics. Uks aimed to promote more gender-sensitive content and greater accountability within the media.

Peshawar (21 participants) – 22nd January, 2016

Islamabad (14 participants) – 16th January, 2016

Turbat (23 participants) – 10th January, 2016

Gilgit Baltistan (26 participants) – 19th December, 2015

Multan (22 participants) – 18th December, 2015

Mardan (22 participants) – 17th December, 2015

Hyderabad (17 participants) – 13th December, 2015

Gilgit Baltistan (24 participants) – 11th December, 2015

Karachi (36 participants) – 1st December, 2015

Quetta (35 participants) – 28th November, 2015

28th October, 2015

Funded by National Endowment for Democracy (NED)

Project – Gender Just Media Drive

Participants – 10

Trainer/Facilitator – Nabeela Alsam, Saniya Jafree, Shaista Yasmeen, Shujaat Ali

Uks trained 10 journalists (2 locations from each province) in this ToT on gender sensitive journalism. The training introduced the journalists to the Gender-sensitive Code of Ethics and how to analyze media content from a critical framework. The 10 journalists further served as local media coordinators and carried out training sessions with journalists, students and also conducted audience clubs sessions in their respective localities.

31-31st March, 2015

Funded by Shell Pakistan Ltd

Project – Energy for All

Participants – 30

Trainer/Facilitator – Afia Salam

The two-day media workshop was organized by Uks Research Centre as part of the project Energy for People. To further its role as a change-maker, Uks Research Centre, initiated this project to impart a better understanding of energy issues confronting Pakistan, and develop a cadre of specialist journalist producing quality content.

This workshop was held in collaboration with Shell Pakistan, the need for which was reinforced after content monitoring and analysis carried out by the Uks team. This analysis illustrated that media coverage of energy issues often lacks understanding of the current situation, and is mostly focused on events rather than issues.

Despite the fact that Pakistan is faced with an acute energy crisis, the very vibrant media is not able to bring out issues and make the connection between energy and economic growth as well as the accoutrements that go with comfortable living. Only when the media starts to look at energy issues beyond the paradigm of political blame-games and point scoring on who failed and why, will it can start to focus on the fact that Pakistan has access to multiple sources of energy and needs to plan for a sustainable energy future

The media can actually highlight the existing potentials to explore these forms of energy, and create awareness among people with care and sensitivity – to enable them to understand the most important issues in the energy sector and should report/produce content that would benefit the public by raising their level of awareness of how to handle this energy crisis, advocate for long-term positive change and the political will to do so.

2013

Funded by DANIDA (Year Two)

Project – More Women in Media

Trainer/Facilitator – Tasneem Ahmar

In the second phase of the project, Uks managed six 2-day training workshops with group of 20-25 journalists in various cities to spread awareness regarding the gender-sensitive Code of e media through the gender lens.

Abbottabad (30 participants) – 1-2 Mar 2013

Islamabad, Peshawar, Karachi, Multan and Quetta

4-6th February, 2013

Funded by SFCG, DANES

Project – Radio for Peace Building: A Common Ground Approach

Participants – 30

Trainer/Facilitator – Tasneem Ahmar, Rafia Arshad

Primary training for 30 PBC radio producers/talk show hosts across Pakistan on common ground media.

September – December, 2012

Project – Powerful Women, Powerful Nation

Participants – 104

Trainer/Facilitator – Tasneem Ahmar, Hammad Siddiqui

The 2-day workshops focused on training, advocacy and content development for women journalists across Pakistan. These training workshops also discussed the importance and tools of women empowerment through the use of social media. Media practitioners were asked to highlight/focus on success stories of women so that a sense of empowerment can be associated with them.

Lahore (20 participants) – 13-14th December, 2012

Peshawar (21 participants) – 11-12th October, 2012

Multan (15 participants) – 1-2nd October, 2012

Islamabad (20 participants) – 24-25th September, 2012

Karachi (28 participants) – 14-15th September, 2012

May – September, 2012

Funded by DANIDA (Year One)

Project – More Women in Media

Participants – 139

Trainer/Facilitator – Tasneem Ahmar

In the first year of the project, Uks conducted six 2-day training workshops with group of 20-25 journalists in major cities across Pakistan to spread awareness regarding the gender-sensitive Code of Ethics for media, sensitive reporting of women and gender issues and monitoring the media through the gender lens.

Hyderabad (28 participants) – 8-9th September, 2012

Multan (26 participants) – 3-4th September, 2012

Islamabad (29 participants) – 216-17th July, 2012

Quetta (30 participants) – 12-13th June, 2012

Peshawar (26 participants) – 2-3 May, 2012

July-December, 2009

Funded by Foundation Open Society Institute
 
The Radio broadcasters identified and expressed the challenges they faced and shared opportunities and suggestions with the Uks team.

The project took up the issue of Freedom to Access Information as one of the prerequisites for democratic governments for transparent and smooth governance

Through its tools of media mapping, monitoring the initiative aimed at highlighting how all information belonging to the public domain, including non-classified information from government, authorities and other national and federal bodies should be easily accessible to allow citizens to actively participate in the democratic process.

November 18, 2007

Funded by British High Commission

Project – Building the capacity of journalists on effective dialogue and promoting positive coverage of women in media

Participants – Ms. Rafia Arshad, Freelance Radio Producer
Ms. Aisha Amir, Freelance Radio Producer
Ms. Maria Mushtaq, Freelance Radio Producer
Ms. Rukhsana Mussarat, Senior Radio Producer, Uks
Ms. Saadia Haq, Consultant Radio producer, Uks

Trainer/Facilitator – Ms. Manisha Aryal, Internews Ms. Tasneem Ahmar, Director, Uks

An in-house training of a team of radio producers to kick start work on a series of radio programs on successful but little known women entrepreneurs. The programmes were to be broadcasted by different FM channels on International Women’s Day 2008

These radio programs aim to strengthen the awareness, in Pakistan, of constraints in women’s development and to promote empowerment

8th November, 2007

Funded by National Endowment for Democracy (NED), USA

Project – Promoting Issue-bases Radio Journalism on women’s Political Empowerment

Participants – six producers-two each from Rawalpindi, Hasanabdal and Bahawalpur

Trainer/Facilitator –

Ms. Tasneem Ahmar, Director and Executive producer- Uks

Mr. Wussatullah Khan, Senior producer- BBC Urdu Service

Mr. Asif Farouqi, Correspondent – BBC Urdu Service

Ms. Rukhsana Mussarat, Senior Radio Producer – Uks

Ms. Saadia Haq, Radio Producer and project coordinator – Uks

The five-day training on radio journalism conducted by Uks Research Centre – an Islamabad-based NGO productively concluded on 8th November 2007. The training was conducted as part of Uks’ continued effort to improve journalistic standards, promote issue-based programming and investigative journalism in the Pakistani media.

This training programme was organized to enable a team radio producers of to produce a ten-part radio series called Hamari Taraqi, Hamari Awaz (Our Development, Our Voice) which will be aired through nationwide FM channels.

Each trainee team comprised one male and one female. Ms. Saira Noreen and Mr. Adeel Javed from Campus Radio, Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Mr. Shakeel Awan – lecturer, Allama Iqbal Open University and Ms. Marium Kiani – reporter, Dawn from the Islamabad/Rawalpindi region and Ms. Shehla Nazmeen, Presenter and Mr. Shoukat Ali, Program Manager / Producer from Sunrise FM 97 Hassanabdal attended the training

16th October 2006

Funded by British High Commission

Project – Aurat, Ghairat aur Qatl

Participants – 5-10 amateur radio producers

Trainer/Facilitator – Wuss’atullah Khan, BBC

The workshop was conducted by Uks to train its radio journalists in preparing radio reports. This workshop primarily focused on the making of package reports and script-less reports. The radio journalists at Uks were preparing for a new series on ‘honor’ crimes so they were also given guidelines on working on sensitive issues and areas.

January – December, 2006

Funded by Global Fund for Women
 
This series of workshops for the media were held in the run-up to the 2005 earthquake that left entire country shaken. With the entire population sitting glued to their TVs (this was the first time that Pakistan experienced disaster with extensive and live media coverage post the media boom in the country in 2000 ) media had a strong role to play. Unfortunately, ethics, sensitivity and gender responsiveness remained least of their concerns. Uks with extensive experience in media training, took this responsibility and held a series of workshops for print and electronic media journalists, training them to report on disaster through women’s eyes.

February – March, 2006

Funded by The Asia Foundation
 
The field-based training was held with journalists on the 2005 Earthquake site in the northern region of Pakistan. The training especially focused on positive reporting and bringing out stories of resilience rather than despair. With gender-sensitivity as cross-cutting theme, the training aimed to train all journalists to view each event through the gender lens. Among the don’ts the journalistic were taught to report on women and girls not as victims but rather as survivors, even providing them with a glossary of words and narrative while reporting on disaster.

2001

Funded by United Nations Development Programme) UNDP
 
A project for the media persons for a better understanding of HIV/AIDS from a development perspective. The training especially focused on the use of sensitive and neutral language, ethical and socially responsible reporting on HIV and AIDS, helping to remove taboo associated with PLWHAs.

2000

Funded by UNAIDS Pakistan
A project on capacity building of media persons for more responsible coverage on HIV and AIDS.

April 1999

Funded by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES), Pakistan
One of the pioneering workshops in Pakistan on gender-sensitive reporting in the print media, this workshop aimed to train journalists to report in gender-neutral and unbiased ways. The aim was to change the media narratives on portrayal of women as weak, helpless and dependent on male counterparts.

2-3rd November, 1998

Funded by PANOS

Project – Sensitizing Media on Issues of HIV and AIDS

This was among the ground-breaking training workshops for media in Pakistan on a tabooed and sensitive issue. Uks trained journalists to report about HIV and AIDS in a well-informed manner. In addition to raising their awareness on its medical and physiological effects, the training sensitised journalists to the social impact of unethical reporting on this issue. The training also included meeting and talking to PLWHAs in order to bust myths about the disease being contagious etc.

21st September, 1998 (Karachi) 10th September, 1998 (Islamabad)

High Commission

Project -Impact of newspaper language and reporting on women’s development and status

Training of print media journalists on positive and gender-just portrayal of women in their news reports. From gender-responsive language to women’s perspective, and from research to images, in news reports – this was pioneering workshops on this issue in the country.