Kyle James has been conducting DW Akademie workshops in Asia and Central Asia since 2008, covering radio production, multimedia journalism and print.

The smell was nauseating and the sight quite a depressing one. The ten participants of the Climate Change Workshop in Chennai / India, along with the two trainers and our guide, had just scrambled up to the top of a building to get a better view of the Kodungaiyur dumpyard in the northern part of the city. We were there to see how waste disposal, unregulated construction, and short-sighted transportation and energy policies were harming the environment and contributing to climate change by releasing greenhouse gases and paving over important carbon sinks like wetlands.

In many societies, people with disabilities are pushed aside – be they mentally challenged or physically impaired. Some of them have to beg for money in the streets, others stay out of sight or are even locked away.

In Cambodia, the country’s Disability Action Council (DAC) estimates that nearly five percent of the population of 14.9 million people is disabled. According to the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), Cambodia’s high disability rates can be attributed to three main factors:
• “past war casualties
• the ongoing risk of mines,
• the lack of prevention and primary care for various disabling diseases.”

The Cambodian media don’t often deal with the lives of the disabled. One reason may be shyness or ignorance on the part of the journalists about the life of people with disabilities. But two recent television training workshops have helped improve the way journalists portray people with disabilities in the media. They were jointly organized by DW Akademie, Germany’s GIZ and the Women’s Media Centre of Cambodia.

Six Indian journalists have taken stock of their seven-week fellowship at DW Akademie in Bonn. The Meeting and Exchange Project Grow.Green.India, financed by the Robert Bosch Stiftung, not only changed their image of Germany, but also provided them with new inspiration and ideas: for their country, for their journalistic work and – not least – for their own contributions for a “sustainable” future of our planet. Click on the pictures to see the videos.

The Indian fellows proudly presented their certificates at the end of their stay

The multimedia site “grow.green.india” is the productive result of the Meeting and Exchange Project for Indian Journalists, which has just wrapped up in Bonn. For seven weeks, six journalists from across India enjoyed intense training in multimedia journalism and had ample opportunity to produce their own reports for the site.

DW Akademie together with Germany’s Robert Bosch Stiftung has wrapped up the selection process for its Meeting and Exchange Project for Indian Journalists . Almost 150 journalists from all across India applied for this project.

Applications are under review by project manager Patrick Benning (left) and head of DW-AKADEMIE's Asia division Dr. Andrea Rübenacker

The call for applications to the fellowship was launched online. The reaction to it by far exceeded all expectations. “We were extremely impressed by the high number of talented and qualified journalists applying,” says project manager Sabina Casagrande who spent two weeks evaluating the applications together with her colleague Patrick Benning. Both project managers admit they would have loved to invite more journalists to participate. “It was heartbreaking to have to reject so many promising candidates,” they say. However, six fellows between the ages of 25 – 35 will be heading to Germany in September for one-and-a-half months of journalistic and intercultural training. They will also be putting together a multimedia project on the topic of sustainability. Here’s a quick peek at the participants: