INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTRE KURDISTAN

International trainer Dan Mason on February 10, 2012 started a 3 day workshop on marketing with Kurdistani Nwe, the newspaper of one of the two main Kurdish parties PUK. Mason works with the management, editor in chief and the editors on making the paper attractive for bigger target groups and thus making it more interesting for advertisers. The training takes place in the offices of Kurdistani Nwe. Mason is a seasoned British journalist, who has worked for different media, also as an editor in chief, and who has trained extensively all over the world, mainly for the Reuters/Thomson Foundation.

Nafiss Nia is back in Kurdistan to give her third training at Kurdsat TV. This time she will give a 7-day training about TV directing for eight TV makers of the channel. Nafiss will give the trainees practical and general knowledge on how to direct a film in TV world. Directing is all about managing and a good manager is always a good start for a good program. During the training they are going to focus on various steps that a director has to take in order to make a good TV film /program whether it is a documentary, fiction or even a TV program.

On February 10 Henk ten Oever and Felix Meurders started their second Masterclass for two presenters of Gali Kurdistan and two presenters of Kurdsat TV. Both TV channels are PUK . They will talk with the presenters about how to perform on television and learn them all the practical skills on how to make an exciting interview with a guest or correspondent, about the use of body language, tone, voice, and how to improvise.

Hawlati was the last newspaper Dutch trainer Nynke La Porte visited during her 6 day tour of Kurdish media for IMCK. She informed her Kurdish colleagues on how to report during and before elections, especially when a new opposition group joins the election race. She finished her tour on June 11. Journalists of Hawler newspaper, Kurdsat TV, Barzan newspaper, Zagros TV, Awene newspaper and Hawlati newspaper all went to the streets to ask people who they would vote for, and why. They found many people expected to vote for the new Change List, and the ruling parties KDP and PUK would be losing seats in the Kurdish parliament. Also, the subjects people found interesting, differed from what some journalists expected. Voters are mainly concerned about jobless youth, failing justice, water, electricity and roads. Safety is hardly an issue for voters in Kurdistan.

How play a more visible role inside the party, and how to get through the glass ceiling. Those are questions raised during a 5 day workshop for around 20 women inside PUK, which started on May 11, 2009, at the provincial PUK office in Sulaymaniya. Trainers are Sabina Gazic (member of the Amsterdam city council) and Gregor Niessen (trainer on political cadres in different countries).

Trainer Adrian Roling stayed on in Kurdistan for another week after his workshop in Kifri, to train 16 young reporters and editors of Gali Kurdistan, one of the TV-stations of PUK in Sulaymaniya. From March 23 to 26 he showed them what news items are and how to make a news reportage for TV. His participants were young and eager: 'They want to learn, they seem to soak in the information', Roling commented. The best product of the training was broadcasted on Gali Kurdistan. The stations' editor in chief is very positive about the changes made in only four days.

At the traininghall of IMCK in Sulaymaniya a 5 day training has started for local politicians of PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan), on improving relations with the press. What is your message, and how to get it across, was the main subject of the workshops given by Gregor Niessen and Sabina Gazic. Gazic is a member for the Dutch social democrats (PvdA) of the city council of Amsterdam, Niessen has conducted these training both in the Netherlands and in a number of foreign countries. For PUK almost twenty local politicians participate.