What started as a mentorship program flourished into an impactful digital skill set journey. Women At Web Tanzania in partnership with Boresha Habari Project funded by USAID conducted the digital skills training to female journalists with an aim of to equip young female journalists and those who aspires to be one in the near future with the knowledge about Digital Skills, Basic laws and regulations affecting the cyberspace, dealing and overcoming online gender-based violence.
The mentorship program, has been on a series of focus group discussions and digital skills trainings that focused on Data Storytelling, Fact Checking, Digital Platforms, Digital Citizenship, Digital rights, Digital You, Digital Storytelling, Safe Online Space, Digital Opportunities, Laws governing the Digital Space, Digital Security. These program target beyond capacity building.
We can proudly say that through the training a sisterhood was formed. Digital Journalists have actively worked in embracing digital media. From the Whats App groups formed throughout the training and after training the female journalists had the opportunity network with each other share their experiences not only about the training but the challenges that exists in the field of journalism and what can be done to improve it.
Journalists have spoken of what they have learnt throughout the program, “I have learnt how I can use digital skills in collecting information and distributing it while targeting my online audience and making my pages appealing based on the posts that I share on daily basis.” Says Monica Patrick, a freelancer that writes articles in relation to education and gender based violence.”
An award winning journalist from Azam Media, Hilda Phoya says, “The program has increased my knowledge on data journalism and I was able to learn from fellow journalists of convenient ways to use in designing content, creating quality content and disseminating information across digital platforms.”
Faima Ibrahim, a journalist from MCI radio in Kampala Uganda, says, “I now know that I can use digital platforms as a place to brand myself in terms of the works I have done throughout the years, also as a journalist I do not need to have the professional equipments to do my job, rather I can use my Smartphone to still quality create content as well as collect and disseminate information.”
Data Journalism has been an eye opener for many journalists as they have learned how they can use statistics to write and report news stories through data visualization and make the story attractive to the audiences in the digital space.
The Boresha Habari Project funded by USAID in partnership with Women At Web Tanzania sees potential in these female journalists, for the knowledge they have received does not get to end on applying it on their careers but rather sharing it with aspiring journalists and other young females who have minimum or no knowledge at all about digital skills and literacy.