media development

What was true for me a teenager in Missouri, I know also to be true for high school students in China: The best teachers are the teachers who let go. Through the Student Journalism in China program, students have developed the critical thinking they need to become active, engaged citizens, and behind these students are confident teachers.

As today is International Corporate Philanthropy Day, we salute private-sector partnerships that seek to make a better world. IREX's work is supported by a mix of funding from government agencies, private foundations, and individual donors. Corporate philanthropy also plays an important role in IREX's programming, especially in such areas as education, technology and media development.

One year ago, Tunisian president Zine el Abidine ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia, resigned his position, and Tunisia embarked upon its transition to a new political structure. The “Arab Spring,” as it came to be called, has inspired many academics, development professionals, and others to draw comparisons to the events in Eastern Europe that roughly 20 years ago resulted in the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Ten years ago, Vesna Dobrosavljevic was a budding Serbian radio journalist enrolled in the IREX Summer School for radio production in Kotor, Montenegro. Today, she is the information and business website editor for B92 Radio (Serbia’s leading independent news outlet) and more importantly, a qualified trainer herself lending expertise to the next generation of Serbian journalists.

I recently witnessed/observed first-hand the challenges facing media reform in Serbia, and indeed, in most of the countries where IREX works.

Jocelyn Grange, a media consultant working for IREX in Chad, writes about two community radio stations and the dedicated journalists who keep them running in spite of limited resources. 

While Tunisia’s revolution continues to have different meanings for different constituencies, perhaps in nowhere is the transformation more profoundly felt than in the media sector. After decades of extreme censorship, and in some cases outright brutality directed against journalists and editors, and more recently bloggers, who circumvented the government line, media representatives now feel the fear and intimidation lifting.

As part of United Nations' International Year of Youth, I asked our Chief of Party for the Azerbaijan New Media Project Angela Nicoara about her experience with youth and their involvement in media. Angela says that media tools and skills can help youth have an outlet to affect their own communities and futures in Azerbaijan and throughout the world.

Here are more of Angela's answers.

From May 1 to 3, for the first time, the United States hosted World Press Freedom Day, an event inspired by African journalists. Every day around the globe free expression is under threat.  For the champions of a free media, the dates, places and people may change but not the objective. Twenty years ago it was the Soviet Union’s dictatorship and South Africa’s apartheid that was disintegrating; today another revolution is transforming the Middle East.  Courageous journalists, advocates, and new media pioneers proclaimed a single persistent message at this year’s event: freedom of expression is indispensable to democratic growth.

I recently returned from a brief and productive trip to the Middle East looking at the existing portfolio of programs IREX implements in the region and exploring possibilities for new opportunities.