In Myanmar, Agape Community Services is based in the Kalay-Kabaw Valley, one of the highest risk areas of HIV transmission in the country. ACS designed a project last year that would be a faith-based response to HIV-related stigma and discrimination. Supported by WACC, the project was designed to be implemented in 30 communities in the area with a total population of about10,000. The project sought to increase the participation of HIV positive persons in community life.

Through the project, Agape Community Service has gained prominence as a group engaged in important work on HIV and AIDS. 

Last July, communication skills training was initiated.  Thirty people attended, including religious leaders, community authorities, and HIV positive participants. They gained an understanding of stigma and discrimination and its causes. They learned about the need and importance of communication skills.  They gained awareness on how to reduce stigma and deal with public discrimination directed to those infected or affected by the virus. They realized the need to overcome the six related impediments of stigma: shame, denial, discrimination, negligence, marginalization, and mistreatment.

Twenty-six HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns were conducted and information materials distributed in targeted communities. The facilitators reached out to 1,300 community members. People living with HIV and AIDS (PLHIV) also took part, reaching 480 people, mostly friends and families. The participants gained knowledge of HIV and AIDS, reproductive health, rights of PLHIV and orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs).  Gradually, the participants’ behavior and attitudes have been changed on PLHIV and OVCs.  As a result, they began to gain awareness on how fellow PLHIV, family members, and relatives can be encouraged at home, at workplaces, in churches and in the community.

The United Nations Population Fund in Belarus is translating into Russian the Resource Kit for Gender-Ethical Journalism published by WACC and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), which is already available in English, Arabic, French and Spanish. UNFPA intends to publish the kit for students and teachers of journalism at Belarusian universities, according to UNPFA Communication/Advocacy Assistant Paulina Ivanko. In an e-mail to WACC, Ivanko said UNFPA also intends to use the kit in a seminar in early June that it is organizing for journalists on "gender and the media." "Many people treat gender inequality and the issue of gender itself as unimportant, meanwhile it's a part of our life that affects each member of the society in many ways. Because of the low levels of understanding of gender in society, sometimes the word "gender" acquires negative connotation," Ivanko wrote.

"We want to provide our nationals with modern and sound information on gender and therefore to give them choice to decide whether they share the idea of gender equality or treat it with reserve. In this regard it's critical for journalists, university students and professors of the departments of journalism to understand 'gender' and write about it in an educated manner, to avoid simplification, as the media is the main instrument to form public opinion and to change situations for the better," she added.

WACC and SIGNIS, the World Catholic Association for Communication, held a roundtable discussion in Rome on 17 April 2013 that explored concepts of communication rights. WACC officers and SIGNIS executive committee members as well as WACC members, friends and partners met at the Domus Internationalis in Rome and participants noted the two organizations are in discussions about further cooperation.

SIGNIS General Secretary Alvito de Souza and President Augy Loorthusamy attended with other members of the SIGNIS Executive Committee.

WACC General Secretary the Rev. Karin Achtelstetter welcomed participants and drew attention to regional cooperation between WACC and SIGNIS members in Europe and Latin America.

“When Alvito de Souza and I met for the first time in Aachen (Germany) in the summer of 2011, we quickly realized that we were speaking the same language of social justice,” she said.

WACC and SIGNIS jointly make an annual award to a documentary film, called the SIGNIS-WACC Human Rights Award.

The International Press Centre (IPC) in Lagos, Nigeria, in partnership with the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC), announced the start of a 12-month media monitoring project designed to improve media reporting on poverty issues. Project participants will monitor media reports on poverty-related issues during the time frame. They will analyse content, identifying gaps in the coverage of poverty and developing suggestions for a way to address those gaps and implement agreed-upon action.

The project will result in a country report as an advocacy document that is intended to influence needed policy shifts by respective stakeholders, said IPC.

The ultimate beneficiaries will be the poor, with intervention through reports by journalists and engagement by civil society organisations. The media's potential roles include: informing a wide range of audiences on poverty reduction issues, providing an open forum to reflect different public views, including those of poor people and scrutinizing and holding actors to account.

The scale and insidious nature of poverty warrants new reporting approaches and strategies in order to prick the national conscience and prod governments into firmer actions, said IPC.

Dr. Sarah Macharia, WACC Programme Manager for Media and Gender Justice, presented a workshop at the Religion Communicators' Council (RCC) convention in Indianapolis, which ran from April 4 to 6, exploring the concept of critical media practice. The workshop drew insights from the Global Media Monitoring Project, suggesting that a critical approach could be part and parcel of everyday journalism. Since 1995, the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) has systematically monitored the performance of the world news media to track changes in women’s presence, gender portrayal and representation in the news, Macharia noted.

While the core concerns of the GMMP are the gender dimensions of news media content, the initiative offers directions for critical journalistic practice on issues impacting or relevant to groups located at the peripheries of power structures, she said.

The GMMP research points to gross inequalities in voice and representation. It expresses in hard statistics the extent to which the news media perpetuate stereotypes that consequently lock into place a status quo of inequitable power relations -- dominance of one group and relative subordination of another.

Critical media practice makes visible the less obvious truths that would otherwise remain hidden from view, she said.

"It is perceptive in identifying the segments of society that have a stake in an issue, and seeking these groups out to make their voices heard. It presents a multi-dimensional view of the world, instead of one seen through the eyes, voices and experiences of dominant groups," according to Macharia.

Macharia's paper and essential questions for editors may be found here.

The Research Centre for Gender, Family and Environment in Development (CGFED) in Vietnam announced it has produced a new Vietnamese-language training resource on gender-sensitive journalism. Nào cùng chuyển động (Let’s move) was developed primarily for students and lecturers in the Academy of Journalism and Communication (Vietnam) in Hanoi. The resource is an output of a WACC-supported project whose broader purpose was to create gender-progressive young communicators.

Through the project, CGFED enabled the Academy’s journalism students to understand gender sensitivity and justice as intrinsic to the practice of professional journalism.

A photo bulletin produced by the students “‘Gender view through the lens” through the same project depicts striking photographs on the theme of gender sensitive media practice.

Reflecting on the project experience, the Centre’s Program Officer Cao Ho Thu Thuy remarked that gender concerns are generally not a focus for journalists-in-training. “They are attracted to the technical aspects of journalism,” he said.

The World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) announced that, starting in the first quarter of 2013, its flagship publication will be produced only in a digital format. The quarterly international journal Media Development, which carries articles, reflections and opinions about the world of communications, has been published under several titles for 60 years. The move is the result of a changing communications environment and responds to the switch to digital platforms – especially portable devices such as tablets – and to audience expectations, said WACC. The journal's print publishing history is a distinguished one. In 1953, the first issue of The Christian Broadcaster appeared. From 1970 to 1979, WACC published the WACC Journal, renamed Media Development in 1980.

WACC said it intends to maintain its commitment to sharing information and knowledge through different resources.

In future, Media Development will be available digitally to be downloaded from its website. For information about subscription rates, click here. Members and subscribers will receive an e-mail alert when the latest issue is available and will have special access for the first three months after publication.

The current editor, Philip Lee, said, "As a matter of policy, Media Development will maintain its role as a bridge between communication practitioners and communication scholars, paying particular attention to communicators working in the global South. In the context of WACC's Strategic Plan 2012-2016, the focus will be on the broad field of communication rights, participatory communication for development, and social justice."

The theme of the 2/2013 (second quarter) issue will be "What future for community radio?" and the theme of the 3/2013 (third quarter) issue will be "People's rights and dialogue for change."

The WACC-SIGNIS Human Rights Award for 2012 has been given to the documentary film Forbidden Voices, directed by Barbara Miller, according to an announcement from the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC). The award is given to documentaries that seek to throw light on a question of human rights reflecting the values and priorities of WACC and SIGNIS, the World Catholic Association for Communication. The film profiles three courageous female bloggers - Yoani Sánchez in Cuba, Zeng Jinyan in China and Farnaz Seifi in Iran - who are putting their lives at risk to challenge state monopolies on information. Forbidden Voices accompanies them on their dangerous journeys and explores their use of social media to denounce and combat violations of human rights and freedom of speech in their countries.

Generación Y, a blog by Havana-based Sánchez, quickly became very popular after its April 2007 launch. Given an award by the Spanish daily El País in 2008, it takes a critical look at the everyday economic and social problems that Cubans face. Sánchez is subject to strict government censorship and smear campaigns and has even been physically attacked.

A UNESCO meeting at the end of February offered civil society an opportunity to reclaim the place of communication rights in the global information and communication society, WACC Director Dr Stephen Brown said in a presentation at a symposium in Germany. The UNESCO meeting taking place in Paris from 25-27 February reviewed progress made since the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) held in two sessions in Geneva (2003) and Tunis (2005). The recommendations from the Paris meeting on WSIS +10 will feed into further United Nations deliberations and into the review of the Millennium Development Goals.

WACC was active at the original WSIS meetings as part of the Communication Rights in the Information Society Campaign (CRIS). It will also be represented at the UNESCO meeting in partnership with Globethics.net, a Geneva-based network promoting global dialogue on ethics.

Speaking at a symposium on "Communication Rights for All – Communication rights and media," held at the University of Erlangen in early February, Brown underlined the need for civil society to claim and reclaim spaces of debate and dialogue about the future of the information society.

WACC hosted a consultation from Feb. 11 to 13 in Nairobi with partners and organisations with shared interests to discuss WACC's new strategic plan and inform its work for the future. Titled "Communication Rights and Public Voices," the consultation was opened on Feb. 11 by All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) General Secretary Dr Andre Karamaga and WACC Africa President the Rev Dave Wanless. WACC Deputy General Secretary and Director of Programmes Lavinia Mohr and WACC Programme Manager Dr. Sarah Macharia outlined the consultation's purpose and objectives.

WACC's strategic plan is intended to guide its work until 2016, mandating a concentrated focus on work to strengthen "public voices and participation of poor, marginalized, excluded and dispossessed people and communities in communication."

Specifically, a major goal is to increase access to public communication for poor, marginalized, excluded and dispossessed people. Along these lines, the Nairobi consultation discussed increasing the participation of women in community radio, which has the potential to advance democratic participation and active citizenship of marginalised people and communities.

WACC has supported the establishment and strengthening of community radios and their networks across the Global South over many years. While these stations promote the communication rights of local communities and marginalized groups in general, the benefits for women in particular are less evident, with respect to their participation in content production, management and decision-making.

By María Teresa Aveggio, Programme Manager

Nowadays few would dispute that access to information is crucial in people’s and communities’ struggles to improve and change their living conditions. While this recognition is widespread it is frequently the case that the information needed is presented in ways that are not clear enough for everybody to comprehend and use. In a presentation by WACC titled “Towards a new information and communication architecture?”, during a conference on the Global Ecumenical Conference on a New International Financial and Economic Architecture which took place recently in Guarulhos, Brazil, Dr Stephen Brown, WACC Director and Vice-President of WACC-Europe, argued that, “This is not just a question of critical analysis, but also of how information and communication technologies can serve as an alternative neural network that affirms justice and challenge injustice.”

Rapport d’un projet mis-en-œuvre avec le soutien financier de la WACC

Par Christiane Ribouis, Association Espoir Vivre Ensemble, Benin

		Depuis plus de deux  décennies marquées par l’extension de l’épidémie du VIH/SIDA en Afrique de l’Ouest, des initiatives multiples plus ou moins structurées ont vu le jour, aux niveaux individuel, communautaire et institutionnel. Parmi les acteurs impliqués, la société civile à travers les ONG, les Associations et les Réseaux de PVVIH se sont particulièrement investis dans la mobilisation communautaire. Cette implication a été d’un apport considérable pour une réponse adéquate face à l’épidémie.
Photo: WACC/AEVE

Gender aware journalism: a more ethical perspective

By Maria Teresa Aveggio, Programme Manager

“The fact that students of Communication will have the possibility of discussing themes such as the importance of non-sexist language in the media is an important step since it opens new horizons and ways of understanding journalism”. With these words WACC’s general Secretary, Rev Dr Karin Achetelstetter expressed her reaction to the news that the School of Communication of the National University of Entre Ríos has invited Argentina’s Network of Journalists for a Non Sexist Communication (Red PAR) to organise a six-month seminar on Subjective Construction of Gender in the Media. The Seminar carries academic credit for the students and will include topics such as communication, gender and subjectivity, re-thinking language: the importance of non-sexist language in the media, and gender violence and the media.

By María TeresaAveggio, Programme Manager

Violence is rarely the result of just one cause and this is true of the situation in Colombia.

The northern city of Barranquilla has been especially affected by urban violence generated on the one hand by society’s profound inequality and on the other by half a century of armed conflict. The situation is made worse by a culture of political corruption and non-participation of citizens that has created a fertile ground for more violence.

Using Community Radio in Building Collective Citizenship, a joint community radio project between local young people residents in two neighbourhoods in Barranquilla, Las Malvinas and El Bosque, and the Broadcasting Association Vokaribe was created by a group of young communicators and activists.