BAAG activity update

Here's a quick overview of our M4D activities since early April.

Public awareness raising event.
On 15th April we held our Nowruz (New Year) event at the Canadian High Commission in central London.  It proved to be an extremely popular event - possibly due to the tasty Afghan savory and sweet snacks being served and the wine! However, the highlights of the evening were the music and dance performances by Afghans and regional professionals.  These, along with a short panel discussion by a group of 3 young Afghans studying Masters degrees in the UK under the Chevening Scholar scheme, provided an alternative and upbeat perspective on the country to our guests. 
Over 110 attended the event.  15 completed our short online survey afterwards, and whilst 7 of these had lived or worked in Afghanistan for a number of years, others said their familiarity of the country was low or mid-level. 9 respondents (56.3%) said the event had changed their perspective of Afghanistan positively or for the better. 

More photos from the event can be viewed here. 

Media training in Finland
BAAG were delighted to secure renowned BBC World Affairs Correspondent Mark Doyle to speak at the VIKES training in Helsinki.  Mark had just left the BBC to start his freelance consulting career, and was thrilled to be able to share his experiences and expertise with the attendees. His familiarity with Nigeria has also proven helpful in preliminary discussions regarding the field trip to that country. 

International Round Table in Riga
BAAG has, with other partners, supported Green Liberty in their development of the agenda and participant list for the upcoming Financing for Development round table.  After consultation with Afghanistan, fragile states and development professionals in London, we selected Bill Byrd of USIP to present the case study on fragile states.  Bill will also be participating in our national round table  in London earlier that week, and can therefore feed into his presentation some of the points and recommendations raised during that. 

National Round Table in London
We've been working hard to refine the theme, question and participant list for the first of our national round tables.  Wanting to support the content of the Riga international round table, we considered financing in fragile states for the theme.  In consultation with experts from Chatham House, ODI, RUSI, LSE, SOAS, Christian Aid, DFID and USIP, we refined this to focus on how the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States has impacted on development in Afghanistan, and how the complexity of development in fragile states is communicated to the public.  We're delighted that Chatham House has accepted our invitation to collaborate on the event, and they will host our discussion on 9th June.  It's fair to say that, so shortly after our country's general election, it is proving difficult to generate commitments to attend from many members of parliament.  However, a number of civil servants have accepted our invitations and we're confident that we'll meet our target of 20 policy-maker attendees across this event and our 2nd round table planned at the end of this year.  We also have a number of fragile states experts from think tanks, academia, NGOs and journalism who will attend. 

And finally... the photo/journalism competition.
BAAG will be launching this in the summer, with a view to our 2 winners (1 photographer and 1 journalist) travelling to Afghanistan in November to produce an original piece of development journalism.  We have consulted with a number of photographers and journalists (including from the BBC and Reuters) and are finalising our project outline.  We aim to secure a media partner, who will publish the final piece produced by the winners and will help us publicise the event.  Watch this space for launch announcements! 

Finnish Foundation for Media and Development: Activity Update May 2015

VIKES joins the project
The Finnish Foundation for Media and Development (VIKES) has been participating in a number of Media4Development activities during the first quarter of 2015, starting from the first joint project meeting in Estonia in January and hiring a part-time coordinator to take care of the VIKES activities of the project from February onwards.

The work with planning the joint study trips begins, and VIKES organizes the first training in Finland
VIKES has been busy with planning the first joint study trip for eight journalists to a developing country in 2015. Yet, planning the programme and finding the right trainers for the April training took most of our time in the first quarter of 2015. All the hard work paid off, since we put together an amazing programme with skilled, inspiring and awarded speakers from Finland and UK! Read more about the first training in Finland in the previous update below.

Participating in the TV-producers meeting in Estonia
VIKES provided input and participated in the TV-producers meeting in Tallinn in March 2015, organized by the ERR. Experienced documentarist and journalist Maria Seppälä from the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) presented her experiences about filming in developing countries and working with NGOs as a journalist.

Maria was one of the few documentarists in the meeting that had first-hand experience about planning for these types of productions, and her inputs were valued both by the participants and the organizers.  One of Maria’s last films tells the story of the Liberian Sam Reayah and his journey from the refugee camp in Ghana to his family in United States. See the film’s trailer here.

International events in Riga
VIKES took part in the World Press Freedom Day in Riga, Latvia 3-4 May 2015. Next year, UNESCO’s main event will take place in Helsinki, Finland. VIKES is already planning activities in the margins of the meeting  together with the Finnish journalistic community and other media organizations. The 2016 Media4Development project activities in Finland will be also planned with this major international event in mind.

The visit to Riga also provided the opportunity to meet with Green Liberty to discuss and plan the Riga Roundtable on Financing for Sustainable Development in 11-12 June 2015. Together with other partners, VIKES has helped with development of the agenda and concept note of the event.

VIKES is happy to bring Member of Finnish Parliament Pekka Haavisto to the Riga Roundtable as one of the key-note speakers.

Haavisto has twice served as the Minister for Development of Finland. Last time in 2013-2014, he was also the minister in charge of the state-ownership issues. Haavisto’s international career also includes various peace mediation tasks in the EU and the UN. For example, he was appointed as Foreign Minister’s Special Representative for African Crises in 2014. Before this, he has worked as the European Union Special Representative (EUSR) in Sudan and Darfur (2005-2007), and as a Special Advisor for the UN (ASG) in Darfur peace process (2007). He has also led several missions to conflict areas as the Chairman of UNEP’s post-conflict work in 1999-2005. Haavisto will surely have some important thoughts and exciting new ideas to to share with his colleagues in Riga in June!

Communication on EYD2015 and other activities
VIKES has been communicating about the project and the European Year for Development (EYD2015) to its own stakeholders in Finnish, using its own communication channels (web page, Facebook and Twitter).  For example, VIKES has designed and launched separate pages about the project in Finnish and in English on its website.

The VIKES activities on EYD2015 also include close cooperation and regular meetings with the Finnish NGDO Platform to the EU (Kehys) that is coordinating the EYD2015 activities in Finland in cooperation with the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

VIKES also informed the European Commission Representation in Finland about the Media4Development project. The Acting Head of Representation Sari Artjoki even took part in the training in Finland in April (see more in the blog post below).

Besides planning the first year’s activities and taking a second look at the project budget, VIKES has also been assisting the other partners and individual journalists in planning their own trips to developing countries, providing practical advice and putting the journalists in contact with our local partners.

Also, take a look at our updates in Twitter using hastags #M4Dproject and #EYD2015.

VIKES Organized the First Training for Journalists in Finland

Impressive panel discussion at the Media4Development project training in Finland with (from left) BBC's former Developing World correspondent Mark Doyle, photojournalist Niklas Meltio, Professor of Journalism Rauli Virtanen and awarded writer Tuomas Muraja.

”2015: Major Year in Development” was a training course on development for journalists from EU member states that took place in Helsinki between Wednesday 22 April and Friday 24 April 2015.

This was the first training for writing journalists of the Media4Development Project, funded by the European Commission. The objective of the training course, organized by the Finnish Foundation for Media and Development (VIKES) was to increase knowledge about development affairs among media and give inspiration and practical tools for journalist to write about these issues.

Journalist and senior lecturer Reetta Nousiainen finds topics on development with the journalists.

14 journalists from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Czech Republic participated in the training. They were selected by the local Media4Development partners. In addition, four communication experts and other staff members from the project partner organizations joined the programme as extra participants.

The idea was to broaden the participants ideas on what we mean by ”development issues”. Thus, over the intensive three-day course, the participants got to learn about a wide variety of topics from post-2015 negotiations and sustainable development to inequalities, democracy and issues concerning climate change and global economy.

Professor of World Politics Teivo Teivainen discusses about policy influence and direction with the journalist. 

Environment journalist Kari Rissa describes the world's biggest environmental problems.

Mark Doyle, VIKES Executive Director Niklas Kaskeala and reporter Taru Taipale discuss about global economic policy and growth.

The intensive course also promoted informed and critical debate, based on factual information and the most recent research. The practice-oriented workshop sessions deepened the participants knowledge on the issues and gave them practical tools to pursue the topics of each day.

VIKES Programme Coordinator Peik Johansson presents common biases on reporting on development during the workshop.

Thanks to the highly qualified trainers the objectives set for the training programme were met well. The training was unique also because most of the trainers were journalists. This created great possibilities for mutual learning.

The well-known foreign correspondents and photojournalists with real-world experience like Rauli Virtanen and Niklas Meltio also gave the participants inspiration ”to do things better”, as one participant wrote in the feedback form. Many of the participants also found new perspectives on featuring development issues in their stories, even though getting their stories published by leading national media was a joint concern to many of the participants. As one of the participants put it:

”The lack of public and editorial interest are obstacles (for getting the stories published). (Yet), the possibilities are endless, as long as the challenge of talking about these issues in relevant and exciting way is met.”

BBC’s former Developing World correspondent Mark Doyle has 26 years of exprience from reporting from and in Africa. He is also four times winner of United Nations Correspondents Association Annual Prize.

Writer Tuomas Muraja and Professor of Journalism and journalist Rauli Virtanen listen closely as BBC’s former Developing World correspondent Mark Doyle describes his experiences in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

On the last day of the training, the participants were also given useful practical advise on how to plan and prepare for a trip to a developing country from Mark Doyle and VIKES coordinators.

The feedback given by the participants after the training was very positive. According to the majority of the 14 respondents, the course met their expectations and they gave the course an overall score of 4/5.

The participants were suprised by the level of the discussions and hoped to continue the collaboration with VIKES and the other Media4Development partners in the future. The feedback was also valuable in terms of planning the future activities during the project.

The journalists taking part in the training will be given a chance to go on study trips to developing countries organized by the project partners. Through the contacts of  VIKES the journalists can also have chance to work together with local journalists in developing countries to understand better the role of media in development.

The Acting Head of European Commission Representation in Finland Ms. Sari Artjoki also took part in the Media4Development training in Finland. She was very please with the project and the programme of the training and stated that she wished there were more this type of projects in Finland and in Europe.

VIKES also invited the Finnish NGDO Platform to the EU (Kehys) to participate in the training and present their European Year for Development (EYD2015) activities in Finland. Kehys is coordinating the EYD2015 activities in Finland in cooperation with the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

Also, please take a look at our updates in Twitter https://twitter.com/vikesverkko and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Vikes.fi  and by using hastags #M4Dproject and #EYD2015.

New bulletins on development cooperation

People in Need publishes two new issues of its bulletins on development cooperation. Bulletins are issued four times a year and sent to relevant decision makers, i.e. members of Czech national Parliament and Czech representatives in European Parliament, Ministries' officials and key development experts, scholars and NGO representatives.

Year 2015 will be crucial for international development. It’s the end of Millennium Development Goals and the beginning of the new post-2015/Sustainable development goals framework, which needs to be accompanied by a new agenda to finance sustainable development. Therefore fist issue concentrates on Financing for development. Topics cover new funding instruments for development, impacts of tax havens on developing countries, how microfinances work as well as interview with Martin Tlapa – Deputy Minister of the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Second issue concentrates on Health in developing countries. Topics look at how people get back to normal after the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, Czech hospital in Uganda, how mobiles can help to improve nutrition of children in Cambodia or malnutrition in South Sudan.