Please put this date in your diary: IAWRT’s 35th Biennial Conference will be held at the Lido Hotel in Casablanca, Morocco from October 24th – 27th.

We had scheduled the conference for Sharm el Sheik, but had to look for an alternative venue following disturbances in Egypt. Please note the dates have also changed as the original dates fell on a religious holiday in Morocco.

The theme of the conference remains: Confronting adversity: Women in Media in conflict and crisis. The conference will be co-hosted with our local  partners  “Le re’seau des Femmes Journalistes” and supported  by UNESCO.

More information – including travel, conference program and registration fees – will be emailed and also posted shortly on the IAWRT website:  www.iawrt.org.

Please email [email protected]  by Friday 13 September 2013 if you are funding yourself so that we know how many people will be attending. We will try to keep costs to a minimum so as many people as possible can attend.

Besides the four days of stimulating discussions, workshops and other activities, we will have the Biennial Gala Dinner and presentation of the IAWRT International Radio and Television Awards for Excellence in Documentary Making. The competition celebrates outstanding documentaries made by women and are open to all female producers, directors and journalists working with radio, television, web and film documentaries anywhere in the world.

The Award for the winner in each category is US $1 000. Entries close on October 4th 2013.

The IAWRT Seminar on Community Radio and Democracy in South Asia was part of IAWRT India’s annual festival marking International Women’s Day. It offered a platform for community radio practitioners, activists, legal experts, grassroots level programmers and those involved in campaigning for policy level changes to come together, share and understand whether communities really have a say in running their radio stations: How democratic have community radio initiatives in South Asia been? What has worked and what has not? What is the way forward? Experts from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan presented their respective country’s experiences and the obstacles they encounter both from governments, the reigning commercial interests, and the emergence and increasing popularity of new media.