Maat for Peace, Development and Human Rights concluded the first training workshop for journalists and media figures conducted for three days on Thursday, February 21st, 2013.
The training camp comes in the framework of the activities of the program "Responsive Decentralization for human Rights" implemented by Maat in cooperation with Hanns Seidel Foundation. It seeks to improve the conditions of local administration in Egypt via developing capacity of community actors and advocating decentralization, along with enabling women in the target governorates to develop community initiatives under decentralization.
20 journalists and producers in different mass media participated in the training workshop, the key speakers were Mr. Magdy Helmy, Media Expert, Managing Editor at Al-Wafd and Member of the Board of Trustees at the Social Accountability Network; Mr. Ayman Okeil, Cassation Lawyer and Director at Maat for Peace, Development, and Human Rights; and Mr. Walla Gad El-Kareem, Advisor on Programs and projects following-up and evaluation.
The training programme included many components such as; decentralization and good governance, the reality of local system under the new constitutional framework, relative citizens' rights and duties to local bodies, how to conduct human rights analysis to the reality of public services provision by local bodies, and the required skills for designing and implementing decentralization advocacy campaigns and improving local governance mechanisms.
The workshop reflected the interest of journalists and media figures in decentralization, which means the possibility to play a vital and effective role in advocating decentralization, as long as they have access to related knowledge and skills to decentralization in order to enable them to conduct a systematic monitoring to service provision by local authorities and appropriate media coverage for local issues.
It is worth mentioning that the workshop is one of two seeking at promoting media role in advocating decentralization, and the second workshop is expected in March 2013.