Maat for Peace, Development, and Human Rights concluded the second training workshop conducted for three days for journalists and media figures on Sunday, March 17th 2013.
This came in the framework of "Responsive Decentralization for Citizen Rights" Programme, implemented by Maat in cooperation with Hanns Seidel Stiftung, seeking at improving local administration conditions in Egypt through increasing community actors' capacity and advocating decentralization, along with empowering women in the target governorates to produce community initiatives under decentralization.
26 journalists and producers in different media means participated in the training workshop. The speakers included Mr. Magdy Helmy, Media Expert, Managing Director at Al Wafd, and Member of the Board of Trustees at the Network for Social Accountability; Mr. Ayman Okeil, Cassation Lawyer and General Director at Maat for Peace, Development, and Human Rights; and Mr. Walaa Gadel Kareem, Programme and Project Monitoring and Evaluation Officer.
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 indicated the importance to provide opportunities for building journalists and media figures capacities on decentralization and good local governance, especially when media plays a significant role in the awareness of good local governance standards, and monitoring local authorities' and service providers' performance, the shortcomings and violations that might result from this performance.
It's worth mentioning that the workshop is the second of its kind, where the total beneficiaries reached 46 reporters and media figures by 17% increase of the programme's target number.