The Studies and Economic Media Center ( SEMC), backed up by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), has concluded a training workshop on writing human news stories on gender violence and reproductive health.
The course held in the city of Taiz comes as part of a program undertaken by SEMC across 15 Yemeni provinces.
At the close of the function, Hamdi Rassam, the project’s manager at SEMC, highlighted that the course was destined for some 25 journalists all hailing from Taiz, who have received intensive training on the skills of writing gender violence and reproductive health reports, adding that the participants, together with targets from other provinces, would serve as a nucleus for media persons’ network for opposing gender violence and advocating reproductive health issues.
Following the training, participants are expected to produce human stories on gender violence and reproductive health as per professional standards, which cast light on such issues, Rassam noted.
For her part, Fahmiah Al-Futaih, UNFPA media and communication officer in Yemen, said: ” 25 years earlier, some 179 governments, including Yemen adopted, during the world conference on population and development in Cairo, a revolutionary work program through which member states voiced support for a future in which women’s and girls’ basic human rights and wellbeing occupy a central status pertaining to the issues of population and development.
The program, in particular , called for enforcing the right of all to access reproductive healthcare, Futaih affirmed, indicating that the same conference acknowledged that reproductive health and women empowerment are inherently interrelated , as both, she said, are crucial for uplifting society.
She further underscored that the media is a major partner in terms of pushing forward with ( advancing) the agenda of the international conference on population and development, as well as ensuring that women and girls get access to reproductive health services and protection they badly need, especially during such hard times.
Meanwhile, journalist Basam Ghaber, the workshop trainer, explained that the event aimed to provide participants the key skills of writing human stories, including by identifying their forms and types and the way of both delineating and approaching the map of sources, besides the techniques of interviewing survivors or perpetuators of gender violence.
Ghaber also said that the function was meant to help the trainees master the art of shooting and filming these stories as well as the techniques of writing and editing video, audio and print stories, in addition to the way of using data journalism.
At the conclusion of the course, trainees confirmed that they acquired significant skills that would enable them to efficiently and effectively cover gender violence and reproductive health issues.
Fa’eqa Hussein, a journalist with the news website Al-Yemen AlJadid, we were , indeed, in need of such a course through which we have learned lots of new skills that would, of course, go a long way in enabling us to write a wide range of human interest stories dealing with gender violence and reproductive health in a professional manner.
The course have added new information to my knowledge, which I was oblivious to, but now, I have a clear picture of the subject, noted Hussein.
Hibah Al-Maqtari, Al-Mahra TV channel reporter, said,” We are very much beholden to SEMC for giving us this quality opportunity. And we are Also grateful to them for holding this function which was replete with significant information that boosts our ability to write human interest stories, especially we, as journalists, were in need of such specific and qualitative courses”.
In the same vein, journalists Amjad Abdul Hafeez echoed fellow editors, saying: ” The course was helpful for us as journalists, as it is related to the most critical topical issues of concern to the journalist: the human-interest story on victims of gender violence, especially during war where people are the focus of such stories”.
SEMC is a not- for- profit NGO working towards training, raising awareness on economic issues, boosting transparency, the citizenry’s involvement in decision-making, creating professional media, empowering men and the youth, bolstering their role in peace building.
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