Civil Society Grant Facility

Posted On: October 30th, 2019

Title of the project    Women’s leadership and Gender & Citizen Journalism

Location of the project    Haa, Paro, Samtse, Zhemgang, Tashi Yangtse and Thimphu

Name of the applicants    Journalist Association of Bhutan

Duration of the project   12 months

Total Cost of the project (in Nu/EURO)    Nu. 2,090,970.00

Objectives of the project    

  1. Women’s leadership training
  2. Gender sensitization of journalists
  3. Citizen journalism

Target groups/ final beneficiaries    JAB (Sectt staff and board members), Bhutan Network for Empowering Women, Bhutan Transparency International, Bhutan Centre for Media and Democracy, Bhutan Media & Communications Institute

Estimated results

  • Women media leaders with negotiation skills

Many qualified women in the media hesitated to lead. JAB believes in working with CSOS like Bhutan Network for Empowering Women (BNEW) and Bhutan Transparency International (BTI) to train our female members in negotiation skills and leadership. None of our members have received such training till date. Therefore, a three-day training on Women Leadership will focus on building the confidence of our female journalists and help them aspire to positions of leadership. JAB is targeting to train at least 70 women.

  • Bhutanese journalists sensitised on gender issues and facilitating Citizen journalism Gender Sensitisation of Journalists: 

JAB has had about 50 journalists gender-sensitised by working with BNEW in 2018. More need to be trained. The gender-sensitisation of these journalists led to use of better language and gender-positive stories during the 2018 elections. This is why JAB believes in the gender sensitisation of all our members we experience inclusive reporting. With the project, we hope to sensitise a 100 individuals in Paro.

JAB will be using journalists who are gender-sensitised, particularly our women journalists to become our resource persons for our citizen
journalism, media literacy and advocacy programmes.

Citizen Journalism: JAB believes in training rural Bhutanese in citizen journalism to help them understand the power of information sharing, opinion, and engagement. 200 Bhutanese will be able to use their mobile phones for audio-visual storytelling.

They will be taught basic journalism skills to improve their critical analysis skills so they may better engage with local and national strategies and policies. This understanding will improve their media literacy skills that will then help them identify fake news, disinformation, etc. It is now recorded that more Bhutanese consume information online than read them in the papers.

Citizen Journalism Documentary: Four 15 minute documentaries will be made during the course of the grant following JAB’s workshop and the stories reduced b our trained citizen journalists. This will be aired on BBS and shared to our JAB website.

Main activities

  • Women Leadership Training in Haa
  • Gender sensitization workshop in Paro
  • Citizen journalism workshop in 4 Dzongkhags
  • Citizen journalism documentary