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:

Ashish K Mishra

Ashish K Mishra works for Forbes India in Mumbai as their principal correspondent. His regular beats are the automobile industry and renewable energy sector – areas in which Germany demonstrates great expertise. For Ashish, being a journalist in a globalized world also requires insight into the German way of thinking. “I want to build empathy and understanding of a culture different from mine so I can do a better job,” he says.

Ruchika Chitravanshi

Ruchika Chitravanshi mainly focuses on tourism, as well as shipping & ports in her work as senior correspondent for the Business Standard in New Delhi. She aims to depict the cost of India’s phenomenal economic growth in her reporting, both on the environment and on the people. Ruchika is excited to learn more about multimedia reporting during the fellowship. “As the landscape of journalism shifts and changes, it is imperative for me to be able to adapt to the interplay of news and technology,” she says.

Idrees Lone

Idrees Lone is currently freelancing and has covered conflict-related issues for both broadcast and print media (The Asian Age, NewsX, BBC) for several years from Srinagar. Living in a tense region such as Jammu and Kashmir, Idrees can call a long list of national stories his own, but would like to use the fellowship to gain a broader perspective. “This project will give impetus to my interest in global issues,” he says.

Charu Kartikeya

Charu Kartikeya is busy both behind and in front of the camera at India’s parliamentary channel Lok Sabha TV in New Delhi. “Indian journalists at this point in time are craving to see and report on what the ground situation in Germany is like,” he says. As a journalist and anchor reporting on policy making issues about poverty, climate change and energy-related issues, Charu is looking forward to getting a first-hand view of Germany.

Sarah Abraham

Sarah Abraham is a senior associate editor for You & I in Hyderabad. In addition to her weekly column on football, Sarah reports on social issues for the magazine. She says that Germany is an unknown entity for most Indians. “At Deutsche Welle, I’ll get insight into the issues that need to be addressed effectively by Indian media – and see how it can be done,” she says.

Anjilee Istwal

Anjilee Istwal is a senior special correspondent for NDTV in New Delhi. She covers issues ranging from politics to health and environment. Anjilee says she is looking forward to examining the strong cultural and economic ties between India and Germany. “It will be interesting to study how the two countries can mutually benefit each other in every possible field,” she says.

These were the key questions for the first German-Vietnamese Media Dialogue in late September 2011. Journalists from different media in both countries got together to discuss the issue in Germany. The German Federal Foreign Office had invited them to the four-day event, providing a forum for discussion, presentations and excursions. DW-AKADEMIE and GIZ-AgenZ planned and organized the event.

There are key differences in how journalists in both countries can cover environmental issues and the effects and causes of climate change. Vietnam is one of the countries worst affected by the impacts of climate change: It has a coastline of more than 3,000 kilometers and is experiencing an increase in typhoon activity, heavy rains and dry spells.

So while climate change is definitely relevant for the people of Vietnam, one of the problems for journalists there is that most of the population lives in rural areas, doesn’t have access to modern communication technology and leads the simple life of farmers. How can you make a complicated and controversial issue like climate change understandable for this audience? That’s a major challenge for Vietnamese journalists.

Journalists in Germany face some of the same problems when they want to report on a complex topic like climate change. But for them, the audience’s awareness level isn’t the biggest problem. What’s lacking instead is interest in the problem because Germany isn’t as directly affected. So German media often only give journalists very limited time or space to cover the issue. The result is often over-simplification.

During the four-day media dialogue, the Vietnamese and German journalists exchanged ideas on how to overcome such obstacles. TV journalists from Germany discussed their working conditions with their colleagues from Vietnamese television; print, radio and online journalists did likewise.

“I think we all learned big lessons when joining this dialogue,” said Nguyen Thuy Mien, who works for Thanh Nien Newspaper. She noted that taking responsibility for what one writes and reports as a journalist can be easily forgotten, but is a matter of serious importance. Another participant, Nguyen Thi Hong Nga, also praised the dialogue in Berlin for being very useful for her work at Hanoi Radio and TV.

The result of such dedicated interaction was a better understanding of how the media work in both countries and how journalists in Vietnam and in Germany see themselves and their work. Presentations from scientists and representatives of civil society helped supply additional knowledge about climate change and other environmental issues.

After spending the first two days in Berlin, the meeting wrapped up on the Isle of Vilm in the Baltic Sea. Vilm is home to the International Academy for Nature Conservation, a center for dialogue about environmental topics. Even though the island is small (94 hectares), Vilm’s oak and beech forests are among the most impressive in all of northern Germany. The first steps to protect these ancient forests from logging were taken as far back as 1812. In 1936, the Isle of Vilm was designated a nature reserve and in 1990, it was declared a Biosphere Reserve.

A guided tour through Vilm’s forest wrapped up the first German-Vietnamese Media Dialogue. But most participants hope that there will be a sequel to this event in Vietnam next year.

This is the blog the journalists from both countries put together during the first German-Vietnamese Media Dialogue: Reporting about Climate Change and Environmental Protection.