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AFP FOUNDATION AND CHIME FOR CHANGE WORKSHOP TO GIVE WOMEN A VOICE IN KURDISTAN
Iraqi and Kurdish female refugees will have the chance to tell their stories thanks to a five-day workshop to be run in Erbil, Iraq, from March 1 to 5 by the AFP Foundation and Chime for Change, the campaign which raises funds and awareness to empower women and girls around the world.
The workshop is the first step in a partnership designed to contribute to Chime’s aim of empowering women and girls in education, health and justice.
A dozen women and girls, some of them Yazidis who fled with their families as jihadist forces overran parts of northern Iraq last year, will take part.
The workshop will be run in Arabic and English by Randa Habib, the AFP Foundation’s director for the Middle East and North Africa, and Mariane Pearl, managing editor of Chime Stories, working with Kurdish interpreters.
The Kurdish news network Rudaw has agreed to provide technical and logistical support to the partners.
“This is a new kind of project for the Foundation, which has so far focused on professional media training,” Foundation Director Robert Holloway said. “In Erbil we will be introducing women and girls to a reporter’s techniques so as to give them a voice. We are proud to be associated with Chime for Change and its efforts to use narrative journalism to bring justice to women who are fighting oppression.”
The stories, videos and photos produced during the workshop will be published on the partners’ web sites. The workshop itself will also be filmed and a “making-of” report prepared.
Chime for Change was launched in June 2013 to raise funds and awareness for women’s and girls’ empowerment. It already has a network of contributors in 46 countries and has produced 85 stories and seven short documentary films celebrating the strength of women and girls.
The AFP Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation set up in July 2007 by AFP global news agency to promote freedom of expression though the training of journalists in developing countries. It has so far trained more than 1,800 journalists, notably in Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Most of its work has been funded by the UN Development Programme, the EU or the French foreign ministry.
Rudaw covers news throughout Kurdistan for domestic, regional and international subscribers to its radio station, newspaper and on-line portal working in Kurdish, English, Turkish, and Arabic.
Contacts:
For more details about the workshop, please contact Anne-Louise Viteau:
[email protected] or +33 (0)1 40 41 81 84
To learn more about Chime for Change:
chimeforchange.org