Designing Your Own Media Training Program

Using an In-House Training Approach

Learning how to design your own in-house media training program can help you to drastically increase the quality of journalism your media house produces. Based on the in-house training approach of the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF), this step-by-step guide is aimed at news and training editors who would like to improve the quality of health journalism in their news rooms. It also contains tips, lessons learned and best practices from experienced IWMF trainers.

HIGHLIGHTS

	Six steps for creating your media training program Training and mentoring tips Lessons learned and best practices
read the guide [pdf - 32 pages]	SAMPLE QUOTES “Do not plan your training activities without the input from news editors. If they’re briefed, they feel part of the process and are less likely to resist making journalists available for your workshops. Issues of race are all over the work. But people approach their grant making as if they’re not.”— Otula Owuor, IWMF health journalism trainer in Kenya
FeaturesAnnotated Table of Contents Ways to Use this Guide	“Don’t assume health reporters know people living with HIV. They may never knowingly have met an HIV-infected person.”—Beata Kasale, IWMF trainer in Botswana
	“Rather than organizing your training sessions as a side event, try to find links with newsroom activities.”-Tidiane Kasse, IWMF trainer in Senegal

ANNOTATED TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART ONE
PROJECT DESIGN: ESTABLISHING AN IWMF IN-HOUSE TRAINING PROJECT

This section contains six essential steps with instructions and detailed examples of how to design your own in-house media training project. It guides you explicitly through each step and gives you access to IWMF documents that you can draw from.

PART TWO
SAMPLE TRAINING AGENDAS

Part two contains sample training agendas from the IWMF’s health journalism program, Maisha Yetu, in Kenya and Botswana.

PART THREE
TRAINING AND MENTORING TIPS

The IWMF’s lead health journalism trainers from Botswana, Kenya and Senegal provide useful training and mentoring tips based on their own experiences. They also share real life examples to practically illustrate each piece of advice.

PART FOUR
BEST PRACTICES AND LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE IWMF’s HEALTH JOURNALISM PROJECT, MAISHA YETU

IWMF health journalism trainers share best practices and lessons learned in an easily accessible format.

APPENDICES

This gives you access to examples of an IWMF needs-assessment questionnaire, needs-assessment report, work plan and training evaluation form.

WAYS TO USE THIS GUIDE

We hope you will use this step-by-step guide to implement your own health journalism training program. In addition, we anticipate you will find the advice from our top health journalism trainers useful and that it will help predict some of the challenges you may experience in your own program. In particular, we hope you use this guide to:

Argue why a health journalism program in your media house is necessary
Learn about training tools and adapt them for your own program content
Select good media trainers
Teach others how to train