Students, Activists & Journalists trained on environmental reporting [Archives:2007/1036/Local News]

SANA'A, March 24 – The British Council and the Ministry of Water and Environment are holding a seminar on Environmental journalism in Sana'a from 25 – 28 March 2007. The seminar will be attended by schools students, environment activists and journalists from the Gulf States of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia as well as representatives from Yemen.

The seminar will be delivered at the British Council by two trainers from the UK. There will be two young journalists from each (school students) who are already part of their school journalism group, one professional journalist who already writes on environment, and one environment activist. Tomorrow's journalists with today's journalists and environment activities together would seek ways of working together. The outcome would be a newspaper report mainly written by tomorrow's journalists with the help of today's journalists, the environment activists and the UK trainers. The article should be written after doing some filed visits and write about a topic they would choose. The reports would be published in the main newspapers in each country.

“The purpose of the workshops,” says Elizabeth White, Director of the British Council in Yemen, “is to provide young journalists with the art of writing newspaper report and to raise their awareness on the climate change issues with the support of the trainers from the UK and professional journalists from the region.

Dr. Hussein Al-Gunied, Deputy Minister at the Ministry of Water and Environment has nominated an activist from the Ministry to be participating in this seminar due to its importance in raising the awareness among people of the environmental issues. The importance of this seminar comes from the fact that it will provide the participants with the techniques of writing a newsletter report on Environmental issues.

Khadija Al-Sarhi of the British Council expressed her thanks to the large number of people who have been involved in putting the programme together. “It is an excellent opportunity for us to do more work with the Ministry of Water and Environment in Sana'a,” she said. “I hope this programme will be a fruitful venture, assisting environmental journalism and co-operation throughout the region and further consolidating the strong ties between the UK, Yemen and the Gulf States.”
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