IAWRT Philippines and USA chapters provide mobile journalism for women refugees in Indonesia

October 23 to 27 are important dates for women members of the Sisterhood Community Center in South Jakarta. They had the first training called Cellphone Cinema Workshop: Sharing Skills to Women Refugees in Indonesia, in which 15 women from Afghanistan, Somalia, Eritrea, Sri Lanka and Yemen managed to produce 10 short videos.

The training was handled by the International Association of Women in Radio and Television (IAWRT) Philippines and IAWRT USA composed of Lynda Catindig-Garcia, Philippine head, Sheila Katzman, head of IAWRT USA and Jola Diones-Mamangun, Vice President of IAWRT International. 

“The seminar-workshop with Sisterhood at Jakarta, Indonesia is a testament that IAWRT reaches out to women who need to upgrade their knowledge and skills in using tech, expressive arts for positive change,” said Lynda Garcia.

“We did trauma healing on day one and that was fantastic. This was followed by Citizen Journalism with Prof. Lynda Garcia. That was fantastic. The learning and sharing in both the trauma intervention and the Journalism training was super,” said Sheila Katzman. 

Jola Diones-Mamangun facilitated the workshop on basic mobile video production from the 2nd until the 5th day of the workshop. 

It was a partnership with Sisterhood Community Center led by Nimo Adam and with the support from Kiki Febriyanti, an IAWRT member from Indonesia and Nissa Cita, head of the board of the Sisterhood.

“The training provided by Sheila, Jola and Lynda from IAWRT has opened up new opportunities for the group of participants of The Sisterhood Community Center to express their stories through video. More than that, training enhances solidarity and empathy among participants as well as between facilitators and participants. Space for women refugees to learn and express themselves should be continued, through forum like these on a more regular basis. We need more creative people in media that could engage women refugees in a meaningful way like this,” said Nissa Cita, Board Member of The Sisterhood Community Center. 

The training was successful with the support of Taiwan Foundation for Democray (TFD).