Sierra Leonean Human Rights Governance and Media

The project aims to train Sierra Leonean journalists and journalism students to report effectively on human rights and governance including gender equality issues. The project includes a train-the-trainer component to ensure that local reporters have access to quality learning beyond the life span of the project. The project encourages participating journalists to regularly produce stories on human rights and governance issues and disseminate them across the country. To that end the project makes full use of information and communication technologies including the Journalists for Human Rights' (JHR) website. To sustain momentum and to promote wider participation by local writers the project establishes awards for excellence as well as fellowships to help writers to master the skills necessary for the development of regular feature-length human rights and governance stories. The project facilitates dialogue on human rights among policy makers civil society members and the media through community forums. It also contributes to establishing links between Sierra Leonean and Canadian journalists for sharing good practices pertaining to human rights and governance reporting.