Journet, the Global Network for Professional Education in Journalism and the Media, focused on electronic communication to carry out its mission of information, cooperation and training among its potential 2,000 member institutions. This policy was formulated and strongly supported during the first statutory meeting of its Steering Committee held in Leipzig, Germany on 1 August 1999. UNESCO, represented by Babacar Fall, Director of the Communication Division, recalled the need of Journet to respond to its member institutions, particularly in sharing experiences, providing training curricula and materials, exchanging of training personnel, training of trainers, and offering courses online through the Internet. To do this an interactive Journet website would be created and managed by the Network Coordinator, the African Council for Communication Education, Nairobi. Information provided on the site will be available to all surfers and visitors, as well as to Journet members. This will include descriptions of the member schools and institutes; their training programmes and levels; calendar of coming courses and events; links to sites of schools and regional institutions; documents and training materials; enrollment for online courses; and inscription for membership in Journet. Arrangements are being made for Journet to be hosted on the UNESCO server, including mirror sites in Nebraska, U.S. and soon in Japan. This will provide access to many other related sites as well. "The first service that Journet can offer to all schools," said Fall, "is training online. Journet should work with partners in other parts of the world to design a basic journalism course that can be put online with online professors from all parts of the world. This could become the first global journalism university. " This spurred the preparations for an online course in the training of journalism trainers for working in Cyberspace. It is planned as a joint venture of the Asia Pacific Council of Press Institutes, the African Council for Communication Education and the European Centre for Journalism in Maastricht, Netherlands. Journet is the fruit of several years of strategizing how to put training resources and trainers together, it was propelled forward by the feasibility study prepared by Mogens Schmidt, currently, Director of the European Centre for Journalism. While several options for hosting Journet were considered, it was finally decided to base the operations at the ACCE in Nairobi. "Starting Journet in a developing region," said Mogens Schmidt, "puts our schedule ahead by three years." The meeting was convened by the President of Journet, Dr Frank Morgan of the University of Newcastle, Australia during the annual congress of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) and NGO holding consultative status with UNESCO. The Journet Charter, drafted and approved at the March 1999 meeting at UNESCO, Paris, was now ratified in its final form. Other members of the Steering Committee are: Prof. Luis Nuñez Gomez, President of the Latin American Federation of Social Communication Faculties (FELAFACS); Prof. Kaarle Nordenstreng of Tampere University, Finland; Gil Santos, Director of the Philippine Press Institute and representing the Asia Pacific Council of Press Institutes; Ridha Najar, Director of the Centre for the Continuing Education of Journalists; Dr Peter Wanyande, Journet Network Coordinator, Executive Coordinator of the African Council for Communication Education and Senior Lecturer at the University of Nairobi.        Contact: Gervasio Kaliwo or Choy Arnaldo, UNESCO, Communication Division