Green Liberty: Journalist individual trips - Global stories hunt

The first part of the third year of M4D for Green Liberty has been with a huge emphasis on planning and organizing journalist individual trips that we have named Global stories hunt. 

We have started organize the whole process as five events: 

1. journalist training, 
2. competition of applications for individual trips, 
3. networking and individual trip planning, 
4. individual trips, 
5. multimedia festival “Library of global stories” that would serve as a closing even of the project.

During these six months, we have succeeded to organize journalist training, competition of applications for individual trips, and networking and individual trip planning seminar. Also, we are in the process of planning individual trips that will be completed on October. 

Journalist training 

 On March 31, we organized journalist training Global stories hunt strategy development. The training attracted 20 journalists from several publishing houses: internet portals DELFI and TVNET, publishing house LILIT, TV broadcasts VIDES FAKTI and AIZLIEGTAIS PAŅĒMIENS, journal VESELĪBA, and others.  In the training participants discussed the meaning of development journalism, learned from colleagues about experience in developing countries, refreshed their experience in research journalism and connected their experience to UN sustainable development goals.

Participants pointed out that the most meaningful things in the training were: experience exchange, information about SDGs and M4D project, and building bridges between journalists and NGO activists.

Future events that would be interesting to journalists who participated in this training: discussions about global stories, workshops about SDGs and particular issues: eco products and green lifestyle. 

Also, the experience about how to integrate media in development storytelling, different campaigns and communication.

Info about the training in Latvian: Globālo stāstu medības - Ideju koprades seminārs

Journalist networking and individual trip planning seminar

Meeting with journalists whose applications for individual trips were accepted was on June 2, 2017. The aim of this meeting was to network and share plans of individual trips. 

The meeting started with getting to know each other and followed by a discussion about global stories hunt – individual trip plans. 

The invited participants who shared their plans were: Guna Gleizde, DELFI journalist and editor who is planning to go to Haiti;  Ieva Jurevica, LTV journalist who is planning to go to Tanzania and Zanzibar; Anta Blumberga, a journalist from mediahouse “Dienas žurnāli” and journal “Veselība” who is planning to go to Swaziland; Ģirts Strazdiņš and Sandijs Semjonovs, LTV journalists who are planning to go to Indonesia; Andris Kārkluvalks, DELFI journalist who is planning to go to Iraq (Kurdistan region).

After this introduction of plans, we had a conversation about formalities of individual trips, code of ethics, development journalism approach, and SDGs as the wider context for development. 

Mondo activities April–June 2017

Work with General Audience

In April we met with all the partners of the SDG campaign "#hoolin" and the video competition winners were announced. After receiving the SDG-themed exhibition from the festival, we decided to make a re-print as the photos were quite damaged from weather and wear from the guerilla pop-up gallery.

A new exhibition was printed on more durable material and from the beginning of June it was shown in the public hall (used often also by policy-makers and NGO workers for events) of the local EU Commission Representation.

Diana, the main character of one of the films made during M4D also visited Latvia to participate in a screening arranged by Green Liberty.

A meeting with the advertising company Velvet was held to discuss the campaign to be held in autumn. Additionally, the World Village Festival was attended in Helsinki to get to know communication and dissemination activities of other NGOs.

Two guerilla actions were also held during spring: global topics quiz during Seto Folk and working with refugees living in Estonia to introduce Syrian and Palestinian dishes to the wider audience during the opening festivities of the Estonian Presidency 2017.

Work with Policy-Makers
To prepare for the policy-makers joint trip to Philippines (organised by PIN), we met with mr Rainer Vakra, a social democrat MP.
During these months, work also continued on preparing the roundtable and conference in September.

In the beginning of May, an inspiring event for general audience and policy makers was held near Mondo's office in Telliskivi – an education seminar called "Education Quality = Sustainable World?". The main topic of the event was global education in the framework of SDGs. Photos of the event can be seen here.
Panelists were given gifts of baskets woven by women in Ghana.

On the topic of SDG 4 (Quality and Global Education) a bulletin for policy makers was also edited and printed: http://www.mondo.org.ee/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/teataja_1_2017_veeb.pdf

For the beginning of Estonia's EU presidency, a second bulletin on EU development policies was also published for policy makers. The bulletin can be seen here: http://mondo.org.ee/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/mondo-arengupoliitika-teataja-el-eesistumine.pdf

In May, the Parliamentary Bureau asked for Mondo's input to send out an information e-mail to all the members of the Parliament celebrating the Parliament's African Day. We encouraged the Bureau to introduce the documentary films made by ERR as a part of M4D. The e-mail was sent to all members of the parliament.

Also in May, the representatives of The Commission's Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development (DG DEVCO) visited Mondo's office along with MFA officials:

Work with Journalists
After a public competetion, a journalist from Postimees (K. Meresma) was chosen to take part of the training to journalists arranged by VIKES. We also met with her to discuss possible future plans and activities after the training.
A journalist (A. Lobjakas) was selected to participate in the joint study trip to Afghanistan arranged by BAAG and the several meetings were held with him.

As a continuation of last year's training directed to journalists, this year we teamed together with the training section of Postimees to arrange an internal seminar for their employees. The seminar took place on the 25th of May under the title of "Press Freedom and Corruption". The main star of the event was Mexican journalist and media expert Elva Narcia, who has worked internationally from Norway and South Sudan to Afghanistan and Ethiopia. 7 journalists attended the discussion with Elva.

The last M4D grant competition was held for experienced journalists. We received 10 very thorough and interesting project ideas. The jury selected L. Tankler and I. Soopan as the winners. The duo proposed an interesting multimedia investigation of the issues social and sustainability issues in the delta of Mekong river in Vietnam.