Ghana to host COMED tool-kit pre-validation workshop

Accra, Sept. 24, GNA - The Association for the Development of Education in Africa, Working Group on Communication for Education and Development (WG COMED) is organising a tool-kit pre-validation workshop in Accra from September 26- September 28.

The workshop is being organised in collaboration with the Ghana Journalists Association and the Institute of Continuing and Distance Education of the University of Ghana, Legon.

The three-day event will attract 20 participants from Anglophone, Francophone and North African countries. The countries are Ghana, Botswana, The Gambia, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tunisia, Morocco, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroun, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Republic of the Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Senegal and Togo.

Participants will include journalists, communication experts, journalism educators, communication officers in ministries of education, other media practitioners and members of civil society organisations.

As a follow-up to the production, launch and trial-testing of the toolkit, the event will expose the participants to the toolkit and its applications and ensure that lessons drawn from the trial-testing will enable WG COMED to verify salient socio-political and cultural issues specific to each region or country on the continent.

It will ensure that educational issues transmitted by media practitioners requiring action are translated into concrete actions.

This initiative will also contribute to on-the-job capacity building for journalists and media practitioners, who are engaged in the regional network of journalists and other media experts as well as the implementation of national policies and programmes related to educational journalism.

The output and lessons learned from the three-day workshop will enable WG COMED apply the recommended adjustments on the various modules of the toolkit.

At the end of the pre-validation exercise, a final version of the toolkit will be drafted for validation and acceptance by all the major training institutions in Africa in 2012.

During the last three years COMED, has developed partnerships with a number of training institutions in Africa, as well individual experts from media institutions, aimed at enhancing national capacity to produce high quality reporting of educational news in Africa.

WG COMED has held similar workshops for the past 36 months throughout Africa, including Cotonou, Benin, Windhoek, Namibia, Grahamstown, South Africa, Gaborone, Botswana and Rabat, Morocco.