The School of Peacemaking and Media Technology by the “Network of Social Mediators” Public Foundation is happy to announce the start of the media training series for journalists from southern Kyrgyzstan. The project is funded by Soros Foundation-Kyrgyzstan Media Support Programme and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). It will invite reporters from Kyrgyz- and Uzbek-language print, radio and online media outlets. Fifteen young journalists from Osh, Jalalabat and Batken oblasts, who have been selected on a competitive basis, will have a chance to attend the first five-day training session in Bishkek.

The course will focus on developing skills for producing team reporting. Participants will learn the tools of balancing views from all ethnic communities, which is what journalists in general have been unable to do on their own. They will train how to work with information sources in the conditions of conflict, identify reliable information, find people from inside ethnic communities, who are ready for a dialogue.

Once the training is over, the journalists are expected to publish a series of materials on common concerns and their solutions. The articles will be published in Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Russian and English on the www.ca-mediators.com website and at the online sources of our partners.

The training will be held under the supervision of professional foreign trainers Ashot Melikyan (Armenia), Arif Aliyev (Azerbaijan) and Eran Fraenkel (USA). All three have a solid practical experience and skills of advancing peacemaking via media in the conflict regions. The techniques are based on peacemaking experience from Caucasus – a joint project, which was rendered after the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Also we attribute to a Macedonian (Balkan) experience on team reporting techniques produced in the multinational journalistic teams.

The core training materials for media-program of the School have been produced based on the surveys with experts and on the results of preliminary monitoring of the Kyrgyz-, Uzbek- and Russian-language press. The print sources have been screened for stereotypes, cliché and the content, which can potentially incite hostility.

 

 

About the project:

The School of Peacemaking and Media Technology aims at creating mechanisms for achieving and sustaining peace via mass media, training and developing activities on containing conflict escalation in southern Kyrgyzstan and Fergana valley.

A multi-level coursework at the School accommodates a series of trainings on the instruments of peacemaking. The project also aims at promoting a dialogue between different ethnic groups, developing minority media, training activists and human rights defenders from various ethnic groups for the techniques of crisis communications. The School is generously sponsored by National Endowmend for Democracy (NED) and the «Mass Media Support Program» of the Soros Foundation-Kyrgyzstan.

 

 

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Camilla Asyrankulova

Program Assistant at School of Peacemaking and Media TechnologyManas str. 101/1, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, 720010

Tel: +996 312 694015, 694016, моб: +996 700 993786

Email: peacemakingschool@gmail.com, camilla.asyrankulova@safe-mail.net

Website: www.ca-mediators.net