The Cameroon Community Media Network, CCMN, has embarked on a two-year training project, aimed at equipping it members with practical skills and guides on humanitarian reporting.
The Humanitarian Reporting Project follows a series of trainings on Peace Journalism by the same media network.
Journalists and civil society actors are expected to incorporate a humanitarian angle of reporting in their news stories, as well as conflict transformation, all geared towards peace-building.
In promoting the Humanitarian Reporting Project, CCMN President, Rev. Geraldine Fobang said: “There are IDPs around and especially with the outbreak of the COVID-19, there are also parents who have died and they have left behind vulnerable children within the ambits of the needy. So how can we as Journalists within Southwest give visibility to these IDPs, yet giving them dignity as persons?”
According to her, the Humanitarian Reporting Project trains journalists to give hope to the IDPs and physically challenged persons.
On his part, the National Coordinator of the PCC Peace Office, Rev. William Nta, said the goal of the CCMN Project is to de-escalate the current crisis in the English-speaking zone and also to build peace in Cameroon.
Peace Journalism, he went on, seeks to transform journalists from the conventional way of reporting to the humanitarian way of reporting.
“We will ensure that journalists speak out for the voiceless such as persons with disabilities, children, IDPs and other less privileged social classes.”
Officials of CCMN, whose objective is on conflict transformation, hope that at the end of the training, journalists will be able to engage more civil society actors and actresses in peace building and in the transformation of journalists.
By Belvin Dogo & Theresia Taki
