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Tunisian Community Radios build capacity to promote women’s rights

More than twenty participants from community radio stations and civil society organisations across Tunisia came together to build their capacity to produce radio programmes and social media campaign strengthening awareness of women’s rights in Tunisia.

The workshop, held from 24 to 26 February 2016 at the African Centre for Training of Journalists and Communicators (CAPJC) in Tunis, was the final phase of a project focusing on Women and the Media, which sought to support the professional and equal representation of both genders in Tunisian media and to strengthen collaboration among different parts of the civil society involved in the defence and promotion of women’s rights.

The previous two phases were held outside the capital, hosted in radios or associations in the targeted regions: Bizerte, Kairouan, Tunis, Sidi Bouzid, Djerba and Tozeur. With the support of two experienced facilitators and the equipment by CAPCJ’s training centre, the 23 participants (9 men and 14 women) were trained in producing a campaign regarding some of the most cogent issues on women’s rights in Tunisia – including political equality, the right to education and work, rural women’s rights, as well as prevention of gender-based violence.

One of the trainers at the workshop, Farida Ayari, who has over 40 years of journalistic experience, said that she hoped the participants “had understood how to produce spots, how to use them for a sensitization campaign and that the radios and association would continue to work together.”

Mejda Ouerghi, a participant from Radio Oxygène in Bizerte, resumed: “This workshop has changed the way I will work in the future. Before I thought that the more we speak, the better it allows us to transmit ideas. But after these three days, I realise that the choice of words is essential.”

Khalil Ayed, from the local development organization We Love Kairouan, said “The training was helpful in terms of technical skills, for instance improving the capacity to edit.”

The eight spots produced as part of the training exercise, as well as other materials from all six regions, have been disseminated across participating radio stations and the organizations’ social media platforms from 8 March onwards, on the occasion of the International Women’s Day.

The Women and the Media activity was implemented by UNESCO, in collaboration with UN Women and the UN High Commission for Human Rights, and thanks to the support by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland.