INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTRE KURDISTAN

The Independent Media Center in Kurdistan is training television and radio journalists in Kifri in broadcast journalism. The training is led by a team of journalists and trainers; Abdullah Sabir, Khaled Sulaiman and IMCK director Julia Shaw. The participants, who all work with the main television and radio channels, are trained in the practical skills of filming and recording audio. For this training IMCK partnered with the House of Culture for Children in Kifri.

What can people do to protect the environment? That is a big question in the 3 day environment awareness training that started in IMCK’s office in Sulaymaniyah. The training was opened on Sunday by IMCK director Julia Shaw. The Director of the Environment Department of Sulaymaniyah, Mr Hama Saeed, and Mr. Khaled Ibrahim, the Spokesman of the Environmental Protection and Improvement Board. The main subjects of the training were desertification, biodiversity and water management. Various experts (Amanj Omer from Green Kurdistan and Dr. Dairy, the head of Geology Department of the College of Science, Sulaymaniyah University) informed the participants about the subjects and IMCK lead trainer Khaled Sulaiman taught the trainees how to translate these topics into journalistic reports. 'Reduce, reuse, recycle and repair' is a slogan, and a message, that fits the training, because working towards a better environment starts with yourself. Everyone could and should be a guar...

Cake at the closing of the StoryMaker training on Monday. For two reasons; to celibrate a successful training and to say goodbye to trainer Khaled Sulaiman who has worked with IMCK for 3 years. We congratulate Khaled with his new job and wish him all the best. Saying goodbye is never easy, but IMCK is thankful for all the good times we had together!

After training them in the use of the StoryMaker application, our first group of StoryMaker students returned to IMCK for a 4 day follow-up. StoryMaker enables you to make a journalistic report with a mobile phone and to upload this report in a safe way. Using StoryMaker, you have got your journalistic equipment with you all the time and can report whenever you come across a story or event. The best StoryMaker reports will be published on our website as well, so keep posted! More pictures of this training are to be found on facebook .

See how your friends are doing, letting people know what you are up to, posting some pictures ... what do you use Social Media for? IMCK runs a 3 day training in Sulaymaniyah on Social Media to show journalists how many more possibilities there are. Social Media can be very important to journalists, to find sources, connect to people, build a network, spread news and find news. In this training, lead by trainers Sardasht Aziz, Baheer and Mustafa, the use of Facebook and Twitter for journalists is explained. The trainers also pay attention to online safety. More pictures of this training are to be found on the IMCK Facebook page.

The IMCK training space in Erbil has been filled with active print and online journalists for the past two days. They joined in on a workshop about illegal emigration and investigative journalism. After the training was opened by IMCK Director Julia Shaw, a representative from STATT – Goran Sabah – gave a presentation on illegal emigration. Then, the attention of the participants went to international trainer Delwyn Swingewood. Swingewood is a course leader in newspaper journalism at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK. The trainer took the participants through case studies and suggested areas for investigation. Some of the subjects discussed were setting up investigative stories, the definition of an investigative story, using the subject illegal emigration, how to use and in some cases protect sources, how to check facts and journalistic ethics. After two days IMCK could hand out 17 certificates to the involved participants. More pictures of this training can be fo...

IMCK Director Julia Shaw flew off to Turkey last week, to join a conference initiated by Free Press Unlimited; the main partner of IMCK. From the 12th - 14th June Free Press Unlimited partners from over 40 countries around the world gathered in Istanbul. All those attending are working on projects carrying out Free Press Unlimited's message: 'People deserve to Know'.