Uganda Regional Conference
IAWRT will launch its latest publication, the Philippine Community Radio Experience, and feature the first showing of IAWRT’s latest global documentary. Displacement & Resilience: women live for a new day.
Around 60 members of International Association of Women in Radio and Television (IAWRT) all over the world have begun arriving to participate in the regional conference in Entebbe, Uganda.
The event will have some regional focus on media and women in the region, with addresses from the Hon. Frank Tumwebaze, Uganda’s Minister of Information and Communication Technology and the Hon Mary Karoro Okurut, Cabinet Minister in Charge of General Duties in the Office of the Prime Minister. She will oficially open the conference, representing the Speaker of the Parliament of Uganda the Rt. Hon Rebecca Kadaga.
Amplifying The People’s Voices: The Philippine Community Radio Experience and Challenges follows the official opening. It tells the story of the ups and downs of the community radio project in areas of the Central Philippines hard-hit by typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) in 2013.
“This book is a fruit of our labor – four years of hard work by the chapter and the community,” said Jola Diones-Mamangun, book project manager and IAWRT Philippine Chapter President.
Workshops on community radio, proposal writing, countering gender-based online harassment and safety will be conducted. The IAWRT board has been meeting to finalize the program (pic right).
“The workshop on countering gender-based online harassment is about creating policies in the newsroom,” said Abeer Saady, journalist safety trainer and IAWRT Vice President.
She said her safety workshop will move away from women working in dangerous places—it will be about how to engender safety cultures in media workplaces.
Two new chapters, in Afghanistan and Iraq, which are already active, will be officially installed.
Uganda Chapter head, Sarah Nakibuuka Bakehena says the regional conference will also be about providing the means to enhance skills, “members and chapter heads will undergo capacity training aimed to give them skills to raise resources locally for their activities. It will include training in safety, fundraising, proposal writing and how to establish community radio.”
IAWRT President Violet Gonda says a lot of work will go into setting IAWRT’s future direction, “this regional conference is now going to be no less than a mini-biennial” she said. “We have to discuss and arrive at conclusions about our structural changes and chart out the roadmap ahead vis-à-vis funding and our organizational development, which will include strengthening IAWRT chapters and policies. We want to discuss new areas of programs, such as: Rural Women & Media (recently started), expansion of our Community Radio project, Gender Mainstreaming, and a pilot project on raising awareness about gender-based online harassment.”
Full program attached.
The full text of the Presidents letter to members Uganda Regional Conference is available to members after logging into ‘my account – members download – international board.
