Al-Fanar Media to train Arab journalists to write about education

London, 14 November 2013 – Al-Fanar Media, a project of the Alexandria Trust, has received a grant from the U.N. Democracy Fund for work that will expand the depth and range of Arab education journalism and spur public discussion of education.          

The Al-Fanar Media editors, together with a group of mentors, will support, train and equip Arab journalists to write about a wide spectrum of educational issues, and to bring many such topics, which are now rarely covered, into the public eye.

The project will bring together 60 early-to-mid-career journalists with different skill levels from around the Middle East and Northern Africa to attend two specially tailored education-journalism workshops. Before the project, the editors, mentors and journalists will engage online to identify the journalists’ interests and skill levels and to ensure that the organisers can tailor the workshops to the particular needs of the group.

During and after the project, participating journalists will be eligible to write for Al-Fanar Media, the only regional online publication covering higher education in the Arab world. The articles they write will help fill the information vacuum about education in the Arab world and increase the focus on what governments in the Arab region are or are not doing to improve it. It is hoped that after the workshop, a small cadre of journalists will be formed who will be eager and skilled at writing about education and whose work will help inform the public about key issues.

More details about workshop dates and participation criteria will be published soon.

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