After 12 months of producing reporting on gender equality, we graduated last week (September 1) six journalists under the media internship program for emerging journalists, Gender Fellows, part of the Projecto Asas. With the aim of increasing the media sector’s capacity to produce gender-sensitive, effective and evidence-based reporting, the journalists were trained and mentored in gender and media, pre-production and investigative and data journalism.
“The uninterrupted follow-up we gave throughout these 12 months that the knowledge gained was implemented immediately by the journalists in the agencies where they were assigned,” noted Sheynise Muzé, Media Coordinator at h2n.
Of the six journalists who graduated, two interned at Savana, two (one male and one female) at SOICO, and the other two at Evidências and Génerus, respectively. “It was a period of a lot of learning. It wasn’t just about producing content, it was also about ‘fighting’ for a cause. Newsrooms, especially the print media, are male-dominated spaces. Programs like this break this vision,” commented Neila Sitoe, a Gender Fellows journalist who interned at Evidências. Neila Sitoe was one of the most outstanding journalists during the internship, and she and her organization were awarded for producing and broadcasting the highest number of articles.
Journalist Benedita Cumbane, who was in Savannah, classified the Gender Fellows internship as a space of personal and social transformation, and of transformation of the organs themselves. “When I started I needed, as a person, to be more sensitive to gender in order to communicate better and transform lives of my target audience and contribute to increase the number of reports on gender in the organ I was in,” said Benedita.
The Projecto Asas, which Gender Fellows is part of, is a communications and advocacy project funded by Canada and implemented by h2n that focuses on gender equality and women’s empowerment.