From Left: Egyptian writer and media expert, Yasser Abdelaziz, and Director-General of Centre for Media Freedom, Jan Keulen, with another official at the workshop yesterday.
DOHA: The Doha Centre for Media Freedom (DCMF) yesterday inaugurated its four-day “Training of Trainers” workshop for Arab journalists, at Oryx Rotana-Doha.
Through the workshop, the Doha Centre aims to enhance the training skills of 12 Arab journalists from Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt, Sudan, Morocco, and Algeria.
All the participants took part in the first phase of the “Training the Trainers” programme launched last December.
Following its call for applications in September 2012, the centre formed a specialised selection committee to process around 320 applications from 16 Arab countries. The committee considered the criteria of experience, competence, as well as balanced geographic and gender representation, and the inclusion of participants from various journalistic backgrounds.
The centre’s Director General Jan Keulen said: “DCMF’s ‘Train the Trainers’ project has come in a decisive phase. This advanced course offers Arab journalism trainers, who participated in earlier workshops offered by DCMF and were selected because of their outstanding qualities, to further improve their training skills.”
Keulen emphasised that “the final objective of the ‘Train the Trainers’ project is to establish a pool of highly qualified Arab journalism trainers, who can play an important role in improving Arab media in this crucial transitional period.”
The workshop consists of a theoretical and a practical component and will tackle the following topics: Advanced presentation skills, selecting training’s topic and identifying its objectives, preparing training material, drafting questionnaires, time management, persuasion and influencing skills, mastering the use of the ‘training cycle’ concept in adult education, impact assessment, and drafting the training’s report.
Conducting the workshop is Egyptian writer and media expert Yasser Abdelaziz.
Abdelaziz previously served as a Regional Consultant for the BBC World Service Trust.
He also conducted trainings, and consulted, for UNDP, the British Council, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD), Free Voice, the Egyptian Radio and Television Union (ERTU), Saba News Agency (SABA), and the Omani Ministry of Information and Council of State. Abdelaziz is a co-founder and spokesperson of “The Egyptian Initiative for Media Development”.
Moreover, he is a Unesco consultant for a comprehensive project that seeks to improve Egyptian media, both public and private. The Peninsula
