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As part of the WASH Ethiopia Movement’s multi-sectoral approach, the WASH Media Forum was established in September 2008 with the aim of bringing media professionals and WASH sector actors together. One of the objectives of the Forum is identifying gaps and opportunities to organise and facilitate capacity building training for journalists both inside and outside of the country.
The latest development in the coalition’s media-related work was a training workshop for a selection of Ethiopian journalists on the role of development journalism and communication on the WASH sector. The training took place in early February in the southern Ethiopian city of Hawassa.
“The WASH Ethiopia Movement believes that the media has an important role in the development process of countries like Ethiopia,” says Michael Negash, National Coordinator of the WASH Ethiopia Movement. These workshops help media professionals understand and participate actively in achieving the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs), particularly with regard to water and sanitation.”
The February workshop helped the journalists, who represented private as well as government-owned media,
to use, think, analyse and synthesise information but also to help them in setting and shaping the agenda for public debates and discussions in the overall development process. It included sessions on storytelling, the history of WASH and development journalism, overviews of feature and script writing, research approaches, and more. Three of the workshop days were spent in workshop sessions, while two days were used for reporting and researching WASH-related stories in and around Hawassa.