INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTRE KURDISTAN

Lex Mellink, came to Kurdistan for three days to work out the definite content for training for the police (asaish). IMCK will organise a pilot of 5 one-day workshops for Kurdish policemen to discuss issues as the role of police and journalists in a democracy. How can they work together instead of see eachother as the enemy. After the pilot IMCK planned to organize 20 similar trainings. Lex has been director of the Dutch police acadamy and worked on the educational program of the Master in Police Science in Holland.

Gie Meeuwis started his second training of trainers for eight Arabic particpants on June 29. Five days he will work with them on how to become a professional trainer in journalism. Main aim of the training is to educate the participants to work as co-trainer for IMCK and eventually take over the courses of the international trainers. The particpants come from Baghdad, Basra and Kirkuk.

Maaike Veen came for the fourth time to Kurdistan to provide 15 journalists from the region with a training on economics. She started on June 28 in the training hall of IMCK and she will work with the journalists 5 days on economic and business reporting. Maaike will start the training with the basics on economics and will teach the students how to make stories on economic issues.

Frans Kuipers started on June 27 his 5-day training for programmers and website builders of the different media outlets in Kurdistan. With IMCK co-trainer Sardasht he will teach them how to use open-source software, what the advantages of programmes as Drupal and Wordpress are, and how to build a website with this software. IMCK organized this training in coordination with SIMI (support for independent media in Iraq) and IREX.

Gie Meeuwis started on June 22 a trainig of trainers for 7 participants from the Kurdistan region. The main aim of the training is to train the participants, who are all journalists, how to conduct training so that they can work as a co-trainer for IMCK and to teach their collegues. The training will take six days.

Xidr Domle and Mariwan Hawa-Saeed started on May 25 their 4 month editing training at Hawlati . The first weeks they observed the reporters and editors and gave them advise how to improve the newspaper . On June 16 and 17 they will train the reporters in the training hall of IMCK on how to improve their writing skills and how to find good sources .