Four independent media workers and organizations operating in the NAWA region received funding to produce and sustain creative, necessary local journalistic work.
These initiatives have worked in particularly challenging conditions, and the work they did ranged from the production of a digital health program through a popular community radio station, to a trilingual health fact-checking campaign in Tunisia, an essential and important investigation on the plight of African refugees in Tangier amidst the pandemic, and a painstaking three-part investigation documenting the Syrian regime’s inadequate health response to the pandemic.
Our grantees’ experiences, therefore, provide a much needed teaching opportunity for aspiring and budding journalists in NAWA. We’ve opted, in that sense, to convene a closed panel on November 14th that would bring together the COVID-19 microgrant NAWA grantees with our 25 journalism students participating in the Check NAWA Newsroom. Our students, who have been receiving training and mentorship on investigative journalism and open-source skills, have also done the grueling job of creating active remote newsrooms in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt.
Despite their dedication, our students have been forced to reckon with the challenges brought by remote journalistic work such as lacking internet access, debilitating local events, and a pandemic. Through our event, students will get the opportunity to ask questions to the COVID-19 microgrant NAWA grantees while also learning about their diverse projects.
If you would like to know more about our NAWA event, please contact Azza el Masri at azza@meedan.com
