The Founder and coordinator of the Media Initiative for Women and Girls Empowerment (MIWGEM), Adama Bai Conteh, has disclosed that 40 young women across the country are currently undergoing a week’s Public Relations Media Empowerment training.
The training, conducted at the former Special Court premises in Freetown in partnership with Leone Rock Metal Group, started on Monday, March 25th, and will end on Friday, March 29th, 2024.
She pointed out that MIWGEM is a young women’s advocacy organisation in Sierra Leone working with young women and girls interested in media and media-related work.
She added that they train young women to become professional public relations officers while encouraging them to develop skills in producing media content and acquiring photography and videography skills, among other things.
MIWGEM’s Madam Bai Conteh went further to say that they are a young women’s advocacy organisation established in 2017 to support, power and inspire young women and girls interested in media and media literacy work.
She pointed out that, over the years, they have engaged in media training and programming, among other things.
According to her, since the organisation’s establishment, it has trained many women to develop the necessary skills to dominate the Sierra Leone media landscape, such as photography, videography, news writing, developing news angles, telling news stories, and producing jingles and documentaries.
“We want to encourage young girls in school to enrol in media courses upon completion of their secondary school and university. We train them to become professional public relations officers while encouraging them to develop skills in producing media content and acquiring photography, videography, and other skills, among other things,” she said.
She stated, “We are empowering women because of our mandate and the challenges I encountered when I started journalism. It is only now that we are seeing development in the media, but it was challenging back then.”
She concluded that in a few years, she sees more women taking up media spaces and acquiring the necessary skills. They want to visit Sierra Leone, like Ghana and Nigeria, to learn about the media landscape.
One of the facilitators, a CNN correspondent, Eric Kawa, said they were supposed to give a helping hand to women. He described his presence at the training as a great honour to be with them and share knowledge with them.
He pointed out that participants are willing to learn and know how to connect. He encouraged other women to contact the organisers to join the program.
One of the participants, Caroline Quee of the Sulman Design Empowerment Initiative, expressed joy in being part of the training as what she does is in line with it. She said she would transform what she has learnt into their community.
She encouraged women not to be discouraged or a liability to any man but to empower themselves and be stable in whatever they do.
Topics such as news writing, news gathering, photography, videography, understanding how the camera works, editions of pictures and videos, and sessions on jingle documentaries and productions, both theoretical and practical, form part of presentations. Other facilitators included Ellen Keister, Ronald Sesay, Emmanuel Rogers-Wright and Abdul Malik Bangura Esq.
