What is CFI?
CFI is a French media cooperation agency mainly funded by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development, and is responsible for coordinating and implementing public aid policy for promoting and enhancing the media in developing countries. CFI has currently involved in around thirty projects that fall within three major programmes: media and governance, media and enterprise, media, and development.
CFI is implementing a project called “Mekong Sustainable News” to implemented activities related to media in order to support better understanding and coverage of environment-related issues, in the field of SDG’ achievement. The project is helping the coverage of scientific news in the following countries: Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.
What is Mekong News Project?
Mekong News is a Project to support innovative digital journalism forms that will contribute to sustainable development in the Mekong region by focusing on:
- Training courses on the basics of online journalism, paving the way for impactful online journalism writing skills, especially news related to sustainable development.
- Tips and techniques to better engage the audience through online story writing.
What has been done in Laos in 2019?
- Conducting 2 trainings for Working Journalist on Sustainable Development and Data Journalism
- 16 trainees attended the training
About Green Growth Story Telling Training in 2020
Mekong Sustainable News 2020 – A training program on storytelling about natural resources and agriculture in Laos is implemented by CFI, the French Media Development agency, and supported by the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs in collaboration with GRET – Mediaseeds – CIRAD/ DALaM – ALiSEA. The training will be held from August to December 2020. There are 10 participants from different sectors who will join this training.
The objective of the training on agroecology:
8-month program on topics linked to the national Green Growth strategy, Aim:
- To encourage synergies between media and stakeholders notably scientists
- To support the production of regular and powerful content and to cover scientific issues related to sustainable development
Training Sessions
During their training, participants will be taught about visual storytelling and audience engagement techniques. They will take part to 3 field trips in Vientiane and Xiengkhoung province to illustrate their stories.
Expected outcomes
- Better capacity for journalists and media creators to produce digital content
- Increased journalistic production valued by digital media on matters related to protecting the environment and climate change analysis
- A pool of specialized journalism trainers at the regional level on issues related to sustainable development
- Develop the network among scientists, journalists and media content developers to create educational and/or accessible content to the public
- 20 Publication of stories by trainees
- 10 stories to be published in October 2020
- 10 stories to be published in December 2020
Some presentations have been shown on Orientation workshop on 28 August 2020: