Snapshot - Multi-media and Blog training

“An exploration of Creative Minds for Future Media launched its practical training program concluded successfully” - Azad Mustaffa.LL.B

Sri Lanka Development Journalist Forum (SDJF) in partnership with Helvetas Intercooperation gGmbH conducted two-day practical learning workshop on “Multimedia article/Blog writing” for the Students of the Department of Media Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Jaffna on 22nd and 23rd at Hotel Green Grass, Jaffna. 45 students (M- 10, F- 38) took part in this training program.

The program was inaugurated with the presence of Prof. K. Suthakar, Dean Faculty of Arts and Dr. S. Raguram, Head of the Department, Department of Media Studies, University of Jaffna and Mr. Azad Mustaffa, Attorney-At-Law and Program Director of SDJF. Ms. Chandula Kumbukage, the InSPIRE Project Manager of HELVETAS joined the session virtually from Colombo.

“It was a pleasure to have a partnership with Helvetas and SDJF for this wonderful concept of incubator spaces which really going to cater to the emerging needs of media students. I am happy to see the SDJF initiative to train our students in various new media categories and link them with other similar students from other universities as well. As a journalist, networking is very important after the university studies which I think, that the InSPIRE project will set the stage for them to be a responsible media citizen in the future” stated the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, University of Jaffna at the inauguration.

The practical learning workshop was designed in a hybrid mode to accommodate national and international experts on the specific topics. On day 1, participants were taken through the process of blog writing and were given the opportunity to work in groups. Each group was asked to select most important issue they wanted to flag through their blog post and accordingly, the trainer guided them to come up with their thoughts and story pitch. Mr. Ajith Parekum a leading blog writer joined with the students via zoom and shared his experience and tips to reach more audience like a lottery sales man.

On the day 2, each group was given the opportunity to pitch their story to the trainer and their story was re-shaped. And finally, each group was provided with a resource person and one to one coaching to write their own blog on the selected topic and story pitch.

In the meantime, two international trainers from Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT) university of India, Dr. Bindu Das and Dr. Mukherjee joined via zoom and shared their experience on “Capturing Community Issues through Creative Writing”. It created a learning opportunity for the media students from international experts and also the exposure to the diverse uses of blogs and multimedia article in the Asia region.

The overall training program was led by Dr. M.C. Rasmin, Media trainer and training consultant who was the selected resource person for this Practical Training Workshop series.

At the end of this training program, all 5 groups published their stories (blog post) in their own blogs. Please see the links to some of the stories. https://nirmalap6.blogspot.com/2022/01/blog-post_23.html https://bedigitaldiary.blogspot.com/2022/01/blog-post.html https://michealdilan.blogspot.com/2022/01/blog-post.html https://kanalmayai.blogspot.com/2022/01/blog-post.html https://kavinaya14.blogspot.com/2022/01/blog-post.html

“After participating in this training, I learned technical aspects of writing a blog and publishing multimedia articles. I’m more attuned to doing research on social issues in my community and now I’m confident, I can use this knowledge to amplify voice of my community through the blogs using new media platforms. said Rohiny Arunthavaselvam, 3rd year student from the Department of Media Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Jaffna.

The participants will produce their own blog and multimedia articlesfor the inter university competition with the coaching and mentorship from SDJF on freedom of expression, digital citizenship, information rights and women in new media themes. This will create a healthy competition where participating students will undergo training and get mentorship from same set of mentors that will eventually promote a healthy culture of competitiveness.

The activity was conducted as part of the Incubator Spaces for Promoting Information Rights and Freedom of Expression (InSPIRE) project and funded by the European Union and Implemented by Sri Lanka Development Journalist Forum and HELVETAS.