Much still to learn...

It may be a wrap for this blog, but it is definitely not a wrap for the issues we have talked about. The convergence of more than 2,000 participants from over 100 nations who attended the three-day DW Global Media Forum to discuss “Culture. Education. Media – Shaping a Sustainable Future” was testimony for me that this discussion just got started at another level.

For me as a media professional with a background in education, it was interesting to see around 500 colleagues in media, including bloggers, meeting with policymakers, businesspeople, academics and representatives of civil society organizations to share their experiences and ideas.
The role of individuals, organizations and governments in propelling more inclusive, better quality education for all was a topic I enjoyed reading on, discussing and learning more about including during the conference. I believe in trying out solutions and implementing them – not just talking about them. But I feel like I have more to talk about now. Educational issues jump out at me more than before. Newspaper articles, discussions among friends, news on TV: Everything seems to have something to do with education, thanks to writing the blog.

Well, it is bye-bye for this blog, and I hope that the discussion will be carried on offline and online. I plan to continue my work with youth, training them to use media to tell stories – including on educational issues.

I also intend to further my education and pursue a PhD, most likely in information and communications technology as well as in development, as these are issues that I am passionate about. Perhaps I will start a new blog soon about research, media and education in the near future.

All aboard for the GMF cruise...

I have spent three days now at the Global Media Forum. I have met the other bloggers, I have made new friends and met old friends from all over the world. I have eaten and even danced during the famous GMF boat ride on the Rhine River. So besides the serious side of the conference, there is also a fun part to it.

One of my areas of interest as a trained journalist and as a trainer of people in media is the influence of the advancing digital world on journalism. That’s why I attended a workshop organized by the DW Akademie with the title: New Trainers for New Media? Challenges for Human Resources Development in Media Support in a Fast-Changing Media Landscape.

The media environment has changed rapidly and continues to change because of great technological strides being made all over the world. For example, with the growing importance of social media, how do institutions training media professionals adapt to the new challenges it presents? Or should we think of this as a completely new area of media? This, of course, has a great impact on the environment for publishers, journalists, etc. The workshop focused on questions such as: What do trainers need to provide in training to make their students fit for the future? What are the benchmarks for human resources development in media outlets?

One of the questions that came up was the relationship between media trainers that come from abroad and sustainability. In my experience, it is very common to see trainers come in from the West to developing countries with best practice methodology and high-end equipment, who conduct highly professional seminars and workshops on location. After they leave, the project that they start is either not carried through or dies off after some time. This issue set off a round of discussion during this workshop. The conclusion was that the investment in knowledge is never lost, but, nevertheless, there needs to be a greater sense of ownership from the locals when it comes to such programs and projects.

Media trainers need to keep the sustainability of their projects in mind

From my experience in offering media training to people living in slums, I find that even for me as a Kenyan from a different community, I also face this challenge. For example, I can have what I think will be a great idea for a film for my students in the slums. However, the students – as people who actually live there – may disagree with my points of view simply because I cannot relate to their situation as well as they can. The best method should perhaps be to support local filmmakers and storytellers. It is important to have understanding for the culture of the place where you are shooting  films and have a passion for storytelling.

Listening to the discussion, another thing that struck me was the question of new media and how journalistic training institutions can balance and/or adapt curricula to a changing media environment. Striking a balance between meeting the commercial needs of the media market while training journalists versus focusing on traditional journalistic skills is something that media academies need to consider. People were in agreement at the conference: Digital skills should not replace journalistic skills. Even if the curriculum changes to keep up with the pace of industry, training institutes should be careful not to lose sight of the essentials.

I particularly liked this workshop as it touched the very topics I am passionate about. Namely: storytelling, media, journalism and training. I have really enjoyed learning and discussing at the conference.

The GMF's first plenary session took up fundamental questions about the role of the media

The Global Media Forum started on Monday with plenary session 1: “Rating vs. Quality: Media caught between market pressure and the mission to educate.” It was a very engaging discussion, and there were representatives from the US, Germany, Russia and South Africa. Above all, participant Trevor Ncube made a particular impression on me. He is deputy chairman of M&G Media Ltd in South Africa and chairman of Alpha Media Holdings in Zimbabwe, and he started by saying that when the media neglects Africans, it is generating misinformation.
He was referring to a video that we had seen before the panel started called “Colours.” It consisted of several people of different nationalities saying what countries they come from. Even though the piece intended to be universal, there were no Africans there. When Travor asked the audience, “Has anyone noticed anything wrong with the video?” He then proceeded to highlight the lack of Africans, which represent one billion members of the world’s population. I thought to myself: “Yes, that is true, and there are no Latin Americans either on the video.”

The audiovisual piece was not the only thing he took contention with. He also questioned the media’s role in education. “It is presumptuous to say that media has an education role,” he stated: “I always have the premise that my audience is more educated than me.” And with today’s access to media, they are also more informed than in the past. In his view, media’s role is to engage and be relevant to its audience, providing good quality content, analysis and intelligent commentary. Given that there is only a fine line between education and propaganda, Travor finds ascribing an educational role to publishers and other media outlets is rather problematic.

His view struck a cord with me. Ever since I attended the Salzburg Global Seminar on Media and Global Change, I had been thinking how I could transfer the knowledge I got there to others. It was at that seminar that I got to know the subject of media literacy for the first time – as well as how to transfer such knowledge to others in a systematic way. I attended the Salzburg seminar while I was in my last year of journalism school. Since then, I have seen media literacy as a subject that should be taught to teenagers in high school; in my view, people need to be conscious of how media works from a young age. I actually thought of designing a workshop for a high school in my neighborhood.

Fellow blogger Hellgurd with Amrita Scheema, a DW news presenter, at the conference

Trevor’s questions brought up a lot of other questions. Are people who read newspapers and watch TV really more educated than journalists in Argentina? The truth is: It all depends on what fragment of reality you are watching. In my country, poverty-stricken communities are now going through their third generation of non-professional citizens, unemployment and school dropouts. There is a huge phenomenon of retelling history on behalf of the ruling party (we call it “reinventing history,” when people manipulate historical facts according to what suits them).

There are two main actors involved in this retelling process: political representatives (through public speeches) and the national media. I prefer to hear all sides of the story in order to make up my mind. And when I do so, I become very conscious of my experiences in higher education. But what about people who didn’t even finish secondary school? Can they tell when reports are far from the truth?

I do believe that by promoting consciousness of these issues, you are working to provide a better quality of life. Learning how to think independently empowers everyone. Maybe the answer is not leaving the subject of media literacy in the dark – for fear of who transfers this knowledge. Instead, maybe the answer is to always work with the other person’s interest in mind, and not your own.

Dramatizing one of the LBE plays

I finally made it to Bonn, Germany, to attend the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum (GMF) on education, culture and the media. This week I will be writing my blogs from here on the diverse topics around this main theme.

So far the conference has been interesting. I attended one of the workshops dealing with fun ways to learn, hosted by the Deutsche Welle Learning By Ear (LBE) program. I think the LBE program offers a great way to learn using formats such as features and radio dramas. I have attended the Global Media Forum two times before, and I found this particular workshop very entertaining. Normally the workshops consist mainly of PowerPoint presentations and talks. In this workshop, we watched one of the radio plays scenes being dramatized live just so the audience could get a taste of how the plays are conceived – although of course they are mostly radio/audio.
I also sat on the panel for this workshop because of my work with youth in Kenyan slums where we develop similar formats for audiences in informal settlements. Joining me on the panel was a LBE representative from the DW Afghanistan department. He talked about the importance of such formats for places like Afghanistan, where sensitive topics such as sexuality and even the role of women and men in society are not for open discussion. Using edutainment formats to transmit messages and inform the public is therefore a very effective method of communicating. He mentioned that even the listeners do not realize that they may be learning along the way. They probably would not even describe the radio shows as education but simply as entertainment.

Visualizing a scene from an LBE radio play

In Africa, just like in Afghanistan, this media format is such a viable method of transferring information. Many people in Africa, for example, have access to a radio or a mobile phone but – surprisingly – these same people may not have any access to educational offerings. Media can bridge this gap, so they get at least some form of education using the devices they have.
LBE tackles several topics from health, Education, gender, culture, technology, youth and unemployment among others, and the production team decides on a topic after several brainstorming sessions and doing research. After the topics are decided, writers from the focus regions turn the ideas into scripts, which are then dramatized using actors from these regions. Later, after post-production, they are broadcasted by DW partner stations and other interested media.

I think edutainment formats such as these remain a largely untapped resource for transmitting information. They require extra work and time that go beyond the standard curriculum followed by schools, therefore they take a bit of open-mindedness from educators. Nevertheless, the education sector can take advantage of this by using it either as an extra method for educating or integrating it into what already exists in school curriculums.

Many Kenyans depend on light from a fire to study in the evening

Last weekend and the beginning of this week have been fascinating. If you had asked me a few weeks ago, before I started to write these blogs if the work I do had anything to do with education, I would have answered with a strong no. I would have mentioned that I train youth in media skills and that I also work with an educational foundation that helps develop solar light capacity in schools. Of course, these activities have everything to do with education. Writing for this blog has highlighted this rather obvious fact to me.

This past weekend, the young people I work with at Filamujuani along with my partner and I finally launched TV Mtaani – community TV in the Kibera slums in Nairobi. This idea was born in early 2009. The community TV is a platform for youth to tell their own stories to the community and about the community they live in. Content will generally be edutainment or infotainment, consisting of local news, local features, adverts and drama among others. It was exhilarating to see the community congregate at the school grounds and watch the show projected on a wall.

Both girls and boys face educational hurdles in Masailand

No sooner had I wrapped up the show in Kibera, than I was on my way to Narok County with Givewatts. This time we were distributing solar lanterns to schools in the heart of Masailand. These communities live among the wild animals, very close to the Masai Mara Reserve Park and many other nature conservation areas. These nomadic communities definitely struggle to achieve education for all – boys and girls alike. Samuel Pere is a teacher at Tumaini Academy, one of the schools we visited. He told me that most parents do not really appreciate the value of education. Boys were expected to accompany the livestock in search of greener pastures and water, a scene we witnessed along the road. Lanky but jovial boys tending to large herds of cattle or sheep, a long stick in hand. This means they miss school a lot especially during the dry seasons when usable pasture is scarce.

Girls faced more challenges with education as they are expected to get married around the age of 14. In all of the schools we visited, the low number of girls in class was discouraging. Mr Pere mentioned that his school has 85 pupils with only 38 girls. He was quick to mention, though, that this was starting to change. The solar lanterns, he added, would make a whole lot of difference as parents who found it a burden to purchase kerosene on a daily basis would now be motivated by the use of ‘modern,’ cleaner sources of light. This would, in turn, have a ripple effect as parents copy each other when they see their neighbors’ children learning by using such lights. The Manyattas (traditional Masai houses) are pitch black with the fireplace as the only source of light, which some students use to study.

As I travel to Germany this weekend for the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum (GMF) on Education and Culture, I cannot help but reflect on how many things I have taken for granted as I went through my education. I look forward to hearing from participants at the conference about their own experiences and finally meeting the other bloggers.