This is an opportunity provided by the Global Center on Adaptation programme: Find out more
Floods. Droughts. Severe heat stress. Water shortages. Crop loss. Forest fires. Disease.
These words occur in headlines far more frequently in recent years, as the impacts of climate change intensify. Rarely, though, do we hear the stories of the people whose lives are changed completely by these events, or of how they try to cope and adapt.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 3.5 billion people are highly vulnerable to climate impacts, as they suffer severe water shortages on a yearly basis. The rising temperatures and rainfall result in increased risk of exposure to deadly heat stress, serious flooding and the spread of diseases in people, crops, livestock and wildlife worldwide.
Join us in telling the stories of the people behind these figures.
This is a training opportunity for 12 changemakers and communicators from local civil society organisations (CSOs) who work on locally-led efforts to address the impacts of climate change.
The dual-track programme aims to strengthen working relationships between journalists and changemakers by upskilling journalists to better report on the topic, and enhancing the communication skills of changemakers to effectively convey their message to journalists.
Journalists and CSOs will be trained separately, but networking and collaborative exercises will be organised for the whole group.
Who Can Apply
This training opportunity is open to changemakers and communicators of organisations who are engaged in locally-led efforts to deal with the impacts of climate change. Participants will be equipped to better communicate with the media and the general public local efforts to adapt to climate change.
At the end of the programme*, you will be able to:
- Better communicate efforts to counter climate change and its impacts on local communities effectively
- Define and segment audiences for CSO communications
- Develop clear, accessible key messages for target audiences
- Map a communications campaign
- Understand the use of digital marketing and multimedia skills training tools
- Understand the news cycle and how journalists work
- Communicate with the media via day-to-day press relations and crisis management
- Prepare a spokesperson for interviews and presentations
- Practice interview skills
- Interact with journalists using a ‘solutions journalism’ perspective
You will also become part of the GCA’s global network, which will support your efforts to champion locally-led adaptation.
*The programme contents may be modified to best respond to the learning needs of the participants.
Eligibility
Changemakers and CSOs communicators working on locally-led adaptation. To accommodate time zones, priority will be given to journalists from Bangladesh, Egypt, Ghana, and Kenya. Applicants must:
- Be part of an organisation that understands and works on locally-led adaptation efforts
- Be currently working at a CSO, and have a minimum of three years of professional experience.
- Have a role, or an interest, in working with the media to amplify local needs and challenges related to climate change impacts to a wider national and global audience
- Have a high proficiency level of spoken and written English
- Have access to a minimum internet speed of 8 MB/second. (You can check the speed of your device by logging from it on www.speedtest.net)
- Commit to participate for the whole duration of the programme.
Course Logistics
Participants are required to attend 80% of the sessions to receive a certificate.
Training dates:
- 3-5 August 2022
- 9-11 August 2022
- Recommended participation: during the week commencing 15 August 2022, one-to-one mentoring sessions and / or masterclasses will be available for participants.
- 23-25 August 2022
- 30 August 2022-1 September 2022
- Mentoring sessions for selected participants: From the end of the sessions until the end of October, selected participants will participate in the mentoring programme scheme.
- Sessions’ timetable:
- 9am - 1:30pm, Ghana time
- 11am - 3:30pm, Egypt time
- 12pm - 2:30pm, Kenya time
- 3pm - 7:30pm, Bangladesh time
Breaks of 30 minutes will take place after every two-hour training session.
Application
Please complete and submit the application form before 6pm BST on 17 July 2022, with three examples of your work (press release, social media campaign, promotional video or materials, interview, etc) that demonstrate your interest in communicating the need for, or experience in, locally-led adaptation.
Meet Our Experts
Dalia Ashmawy is an avid storyteller, educator, Television Journalism Professor, and Business Journalist with 20 years of experience in the field of journalism, mass communication, and business, economics, and the Stock market. With more than 11 years of teaching, she is Associate Professor of Practice in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at the American University in Cairo (AUC) and the Kamal Adham Center for Television and Digital Journalism. In 2002, she received her M.A. in Mass Communication and TV Journalism, also from AUC. Prior to joining AUC, Ashmawi was Bureau Chief of CNBC Arabiya Channel in Cairo and hosted“ Eye on Egypt,” a weekly program covering business news. experience. Fluent in Arabic and English, she has delivered effective communications training to CEO, CSOs spokesperson, academics, and NGOs in-person and online. This includes mass and strategic communications, storytelling, message building, crisis communications and how to deal with the media, among other topics.
Emmy Abdul Alim is a seasoned business and financial news journalist, editor and digital newsroom manager with over ten years delivering news and content in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Emmy focuses on Islamic finance and produced market reports covering Islamic finance asset classes, trends, and countries from 2012 to 2015, working with the Thomson Reuters team in Bahrain. She later joined Thomson Reuters in Dubai in 2015 to create, launch and manage an Islamic financial news portal from scratch, Salaam Gateway. This role sharpened her digital newsroom management skills, as she was tasked with the overall editorial and content strategy, training and mentoring of freelance staff, planning and oversight, working with internal and external stakeholders to achieve commercial goals and ensure business sustainability. Under her stewardship, Salaam Gateway went on to reach more than one million unique users in under three years, to become the leading source for news and insights on the Islamic Economy. The website was spun out of Thomson Reuters in September 2019 and Emmy continues as its Managing Editor with a bigger role in aligning Editorial strategy and implementation with commercial goals. Emmy has a BA in Arabic and Islamic Studies from SOAS, University of London, and an MBA in Finance from University of Aberdeen. She speaks fluent English and Malay.