Posted on: April 06, 2021
Antenna Foundation Nepal (AFN) organised an ‘Environmental Reporting Workshop/Training' for working journalists of Nepal from March 8 to March 25, 2021. The training was supported by Internews/Earth Journalism Network (EJN). There were a total of 34 participants from 22 districts across seven provinces of Nepal. Out of them, 17 were women journalists, 18 were youths, 7 belonged to the marginalized communities and 7 belonged to indigenous groups.
The 40-hour virtual training was provided through online platforms - Nepal Radio Lab (developed by AFN) and Zoom. The training was conducted to improve the capacity of reporters from radio, print, online and TV to report on environmental and climate issues accurately and compellingly. The training included thematic topics such as trends in environmental reporting, issues of climate change, science and environment, Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) in the environment, government policies and so on and topics around building journalistic skills such as fact-checking, story pitching, multimedia for story production, Code of Conduct and so on. The workshop was facilitated by sectoral experts - Batu Uprety, Dr Uttam Babu Shrestha and, Divya Devi Gurung and journalists - Rajendra Dahal, Mohan Mainali, Kiran Nepal, Ramesh Bhusal, Ramyata Limbu, Subina Shrestha, Madhu Acharya, Bhrikuti Rai, Binaya Shekhar Guragain, Mayank Aggarwal and Deepak Adhikari.
The training was conducted virtually to ensure safety against CoronaVirus and to support journalists affected by it. The participants joined in from districts located in rural areas such as Rasuwa, Rolpa, Accham, Taplejung, Bajura and Baitadi. Despite the prior assumption that the participants were supposed to have connection issues and a lack of digital literacy, they were able to participate in the sessions without significant difficulty using Nepal Radio Lab and Zoom. The training revealed that technological diffusion in Nepali society is greater than expected and that digital literacy is improving as a result of mobile phone and internet access. Overall, the participants found the training beneficial, with Jagatdal Janala BK from Surkhet saying, "The training has inspired me to use new technological tools while developing my environment-related reporting stories".
