Representatives of women cooperatives and associations adopted a preliminary draft of key criteria for evaluating the media products of their organizations from a gender perspective, during the third training course on media and life-skills held by the Democracy and Workers’ Rights Center. The course was attended by seventeen trainees, representing eight cooperatives and women’s associations, including: Al Namaa Society for Rural Women, Bala’a Consumer Cooperative & Women’s Society, Aswat Association for Supporting Persons with Intellectual Disabilities, Anabta Cooperative, Tubas Charitable Society, Tulkarem Charitable Society, the Women Rural Development Society (Jayyous Cooperative), and the Women’s Center in the Northern Jordan Valley.
This course is an activity of the “Gender Equality in the Economic Sphere: Our Right, Our Priority” project, which is implemented by DWRC in partnership with COSPE, the Palestinian Working Woman Society for Development and EducAid, and is funded by the European Union. The course was co-financed by the PSAC – Social Justice Fund.
The training course combined practical and theoretical approaches, and was held for three days from 28 until 30/12/2021. The trainer, Lubna Al-Ashkar, addressed the ethics of dealing with the media and the most important skills that must be mastered for making interviews, methods for dealing with journalists, speeches and body language, press releases writing skills, methods of effective use of social media tools, ethics of using the Internet and gathering information sources.
Khadija Daas, a representative of the Anabta Cooperative, said: “Through the course, I learned how to stand confidently in front of the camera and how to avoid repeating some mistakes that I used to make in the past, and how to communicate with others and transfer our experiences to people”. The representative of the Jayyous Cooperative, Shaima Beida, added: “Through the course, I learned how to stand in front of the screen, and how to speak tactfully and express my opinion”.
Trainees were able to develop practical skills through working groups and role-playing. Participants were trained on creating written content on social media, and media advocacy campaigns. They collaborated in conducting simulated television interviews, which were later reviewed and commented upon.
Muntaha Odeh, representative of the Aswat Association for Supporting Persons with Intellectual Disabilities, said: “I learned how to prepare a press conference, and how to launch a media campaign for my association”.
At the end of the course, the trainees agreed that they will work on preparing their media plans based on what they learned during the course, while developing the social networking pages of their associations, and focusing on publishing advertisements and news related to their work.