Meet the #RCCE2020 Trainers

The #RCCE200 project from African Women in Media in partnership with UNESCO under the framework of the IPDC is pleased to present the trainers for the Risk Communication and Community Engagement training. Meet the trainers; 

Trainer: Ruona Meyer 

Bio: Ruona Meyer is an Emmy-nominated, multimedia journalist with 17 years’ experience in print, radio, wire agency, TV and digital outlets across Nigeria, South Africa, and the UK. Ruona is currently a PhD candidate at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK; her research covers the impact of digital technologies on investigative journalism production within African-Diaspora networks. 

Ruona’s investigative documentary Sweet Sweet Codeine gave Nigeria and the BBC World Service its first Emmy nomination (2019), and won the ONE World Media Television Documentary Award category as well as The BBC News Award for Investigation of the Year in June 2019.  A training consultant, Ruona has designed and delivered courses for postgraduate students and working journalists in the UK, Nigeria and Ghana. 

Course name: Identifying gendered angles and impact stories 

About the Course: This course will enable trainers to identify the role of their gender that of the audience and their organization in journalism practice. The modules begin with the individual journalist and audience, moves on to the elements of a gender-cognizant pitch, identifies minefields during reporting and production, before concluding with modules on increasing story impact. These will be handled through engaging the following modules; identify how your gender intersects with that of your organization, determine how gender affects your audience, ingredients of a gender-cognisant pitch, how to write a gender-cognisant pitch, avoiding gender minefields at the Interview stage, avoiding gender minefields during story production, converting text to audio, converting text to “visuals” and social media for impact – Threads and Stories. 

Trainer: Dr. Joannie Marlene Bewa 

Bio: Dr. Joannie Marlene Bewa is a family medicine physician and public health researcher at the University of South Florida College of Public Health (USA). Dr. Joannie is a public health consultant with a decade of experience in health care delivery, community health, research, and experience with the United Nations Fund for population, Oxfam, One World UK, HIV AIDS Young Leaders. She has taught health and development professionals from 20 African countries and gave lectures across Africa and the United States (Harvard College of Public Health Safe Motherhood leadership workshop, University of California Berkeley and University of South Florida). 

Dr. Joannie is passionate about global health, women’s health and health communication, and is serving as a Board Member for Merck for Mothers, a 500 million USD investment to improve maternal health and Women in Global Health. She has a Medical degree from Faculte des Sciences de la Sante, Universite d’Abomey Calavi (Benin), a Master’s in public health from the University of South Florida (USA) where she is pursuing a PhD in public health. 

Course name: Accessing, interpreting and fact-checking scientific information 

About the Course: This course will grant east-African women journalists with skills to identify, access, analyze and interpret data as well as verify the accuracy of scientific information through the following modules; Basic concepts and Measures in Epidemiology, infection diseases and Outbreaks, patterns of diseases: COVID 19 case study, finding Quantitative Data: Sources of reliable COVID-19 scientific information, handling and checking quantitative data accuracy and quality, interpreting quantitative data: interpretation and trends analysis, qualitative data: an overview, collecting and analyzing qualitative data, sharing and reporting data and ethics in epidemiology and data analysis .

Trainer: Sumeya Gasa 

Bio: Sumeya Gasa is an award-winning journalist, documentary filmmaker and researcher based in Johannesburg. After graduating from the University of Witwatersrand, Gasa went on to work as a multimedia journalist, first, with News24 and later joining Chronicle – the multimedia partner to the Daily Maverick. During her time at Chronicle, she and her co-workers produced the investigative multimedia feature, Casualties of Cola, which won the CNN Africa Journalist Award: Ecobank Economics category, Vodacom Journalist of the Year Regional Online Award and 3rd Prize at the Taco Kuiper Awards. In 2018, Gasa was listed among the Mail & Guardian’s 200 young South Africans and, shortly after, was named the overall winner in the Journalism category of the KwaZulu Natal Young achievers awards. In the same year, Gasa also won her second Vodacom Journalist of the Year Regional award for her video work in the collaborative multimedia feature, Cape of Storms to Come.  

After spending two years in Cape Town, she decided to move back to Johannesburg to pursue her Master’s degree in Digital Arts and Interactive Media at the University of Witwatersrand. Her research topic was informed by her experience of living in Cape Town and investigating gentrification and the impact it has on generations of displaced families. Her research is focused on technologically hybridising physical spaces to present audio-visual stories in an interactive and performative way while telling the story of the gentrification of Johannesburg.  

Gasa works as a multimedia producer and project manager at Daily Maverick, South Africa. She also teaches a writing course and multimedia storylining at the Market Photo Workshop. In her spare time, she mentors a number of budding filmmakers and digital artists and teaches writing. Gasa has also developed and taught a University of Witwatersrand online course on multimedia production in the Activism and Citizen Journalism through Media Course.  

Gasa is committed to advocating for social justice through creative work and research. She has had her work published in some of South Africa’s most influential publications including Daily Maverick, News24 and the Socio Economics Rights Institute’s (SERI) Media. Her academic work was featured in the second edition of Ellipses – an academic journal focusing on creative research – the first of its kind in the world.  

Course name: Ethical Health Reporting 

About the Course: this course seeks to address several issues amongst which are; how to report on health matters in an ethical way, without compromising the dignity of your sources. Addressing established prejudiced practices in health media and identity politics. It also seeks to form a holistic understanding of how ethics are intersectional and nuanced, to report ethically on an existing topic, to acknowledge and work around one’s own prejudices to produce journalism that is just and ethical, to synthesise identity politics and look at accountability in in journalism and rectifying of errors. The ten (10) modules in this course are; Understanding language, subtext and bias, what is ethical media practice; psychology of the writer, in the Event of an ethical blunder, children and ethics, interacting with healthcare workers in a bureaucratic system, safety of Sources in different cultural contexts, understanding the socio-political context of the healthcare system, the importance of epidemiology and research in ethical practice and in the event of an ethical blunder. 

Trainer: Blaise Aboh 

Bio: Blaise Aboh is the Executive Director of Orodata Science, an organization democratizing public data through augmented storytelling and reporting using frontier technologies. Blaise is also the co-founder of an AI Research Company, AI Envoy Robotics (AIER), where he attempts to solve real-world complex challenges using Automation, Natural Language Generation, and Data Science. He is an Obama Foundation Leader-Africa and a Code for Africa Innovation Fellow. 

Course Name: Automated Content Production and News Algorithms (a.k.a. Automated Journalism) 

About the Course: This course, which can be also known as Automated Journalism which is the systematic process of leveraging Natural Language Generation (NLG) and Artificial Intelligence Techniques to create almost human stories from data. It has ten modules which are; Introduction to Journalism AI, Algorithm new media, Algorithm thinking, automated content production, Algorithms in news distribution, Content optimization and metrics, Platform power and algorithms, Algorithmic accountability reporting methods, Editorial responsibility & algorithmic transparency and Algorithm beat. 

Trainer: Vicensia Fuko 

Bio: Ms Vicensia Fuko is a media development expert and a Lawyer with demonstrated achievement on research, designing and managing media development projects. Vicensia has extensive knowledge and skills in training on safety and security for journalists, solutions journalism, ethical journalism, new media, and storytelling. Currently, she is the Executive Director for MediaSpace Tanzania focusing on skills building on Safety and security for journalists, Innovation in media, Press Freedom and Media Ethics to upcoming and women journalists in Tanzania. 

Course Name: Safety for Journalists (online and offline) 

About the Course: COVID -19 is a new disease thanks to Corona Virus. The virus has infected the globe hence crowned “Pandemic”. Well, the disease is infectious, deadly and scary. Nonetheless, journalists must continue to keep people informed. In covering COVID-19 news, journalists’ eyewitness sufferings, deaths, mass burials quarantine and so on. Stress and psychological trauma are major occupational risks for journalists. Thus, with the right tools and knowledge, female journalists can significantly build resilience and reduce the psychological toll of their work. Thus, this course is designed to equip female journalists with skills, and tools to report COVID-19 safely. The course comprises of ten (10) modules and they are; Introduction to safety and security for journalists, conceptualisation and case studies, understanding and detecting threat, understanding Safety and its dynamics, safety for female journalists, how to fight online attacks in reporting pandemics, how to identify online abuse/ harassments and tactics, ethical issues, all about security and tools and post learning support and Final Evaluation.  

Trainer: Esther Nakkazi 

Bio: Esther Nakkazi works as a freelance science reporter writing for various media outlets around the globe. She is also a media trainer, a blogger at Uganda ScieGirl and the founder of the Health Journalists Network in Uganda. 

Esther first mentored other journalists under the peer-to-peer World Federation of Science Journalists (WFSJ) program in 2010-2012 before that she was herself a mentee in the same program. She still mentors and trains journalists and is a champion of science journalism.   

Esther is a graduate of Makerere University in humanities and has a Post Graduate in Journalism and Mass Communication from Uganda Management Institute (UMI). She is a 2008 Knight Science Journalism fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) program and was a Journalist in residence at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp in 2016. 

Course name: Balanced Health Science Reporting 

About the Course: The course cover major practical and conceptual issues in communicating health and science. They explain what balanced journalisms is using examples, and explains different aspects of health reporting using; What are the general terms scientists use in reporting health; pandemic, epidemic, outbreak, asymptomatic, etc., what is balanced journalism? What language should be used and not be used? How to tell the whole story, interviewing for a balanced health story, spotting fake news and misinformation, emphasizing the science in health reporting, using social media in health reporting, ongoing and upcoming research in health reporting, understanding the numbers in health reporting: the case of COVID-19 as example. And resources for health reporting and COVID-19