Malawian journalist Suzgo Khunga was among female journalists in Africa who attended special ‘training for trainers’ workshop in digital storytelling to support the WIN Future Leaders initiative which matches current women in news participants and graduates with journalism students for monitoring as well as skills development activities.
The workshop, which focused on Digital Storytelling and was held in Nairobi, Kenya in late February, aimed to groom participants to become peer-trainers in their local markets.
Khunga sees herself playing an important role in improving her media house’s online presence.
She wants to guide young female journalists by showing them the many ways in which a story can be told using digital platforms.
“I will mentor up-and-coming female journalists who feel that writing for a newspapers is too demanding by showing them that there are many ways in which stories can be told that are exciting by taking full advantage of the available digital platforms,” said Khunga.
The participants of the training were drawn from Botswana, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Tanzania and Kenya, and were introduced to various digital storytelling tools.
During the four-day intensive training, they covered both the theoretical and practical aspects of how they can creatively use video, photography and social media to tell impact stories. They were also coached on training techniques, so they can in turn conduct training sessions with their peers back home.
Tikhala Chibwana, Director for Women in News in Africa explained that the digital storytelling training course is part of internal capacity building for the WIN Chapters across Africa.
“We have challenged these new trainers to champion digital storytelling in their own countries. We will monitor them closely and support them to ensure many more benefit from this exciting programme,” he said.
