GCN Bangladesh Meeting

Children watch GCN participants on a visit to Kurigram Char, Brahmaputra river, Bangladesh during the GCN meeting in January

The use of communication in advocacy was much discussed, as was the need to look closely at advocacy strategy. Considerable emphasis was put on small-scale community broadcasting being the "future of democracy, as we would like to understand it".

Participants identified training needs in their regions which can be summarised in the following categories:
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Courses for "barefoot journalism"
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South-South exhanges for skills development
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Training on advocacy strategy: "how do you design and run an effective campaign?"
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Training on evaluation of impact of communication work
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Participatory, rural, grassroots communications training for adolescents
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Skills development in writing reports, features, press releases; video production and post-production; setting up and managing webpages; small-scale radio broadcasting.
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Capacity building in small organizations to sustain communication work: basic management and administration skills, and maintenance of equipment.

WACC expects to hear more from participants on some of the above ideas.

On the theme of disasters participants spent a day visiting Kurigram Char on the Brahmaputra river. Communities living there on sandbanks regularly deal with disasters as the sandbanks are washed away by frequent floods. A film of the visit will be made available.

“The future of democracy, as we would like to understand it, is community broadcasting” said Afsan Chowdury of the Daily Star, a keynote speaker at the GCN conference

The meeting was highly rated in final evaluation, for the networking that went on and for the depth of discussion on the mentioned themes.

It was decided that the next GCN meeting, in two years time, will be held in Cape Town.

More info:
http://www.globalcommunicators.net