Wanna Learn Photography and Video Editing on Your Phone? Register For This Citizen Journalism Workshop.

I just came across a flier sent in one of the WhatsApp groups that I’m in and I found it interesting. The flier was advertising a workshop on “Mobile Reporting For Community Journalism In Zimbabwe”.

I remember during the coup-not-coup, Techzim wrote on how technology particularly smartphones, the internet and social media had played a great role in documenting the events that were taking place. It was until then that I truly appreciated citizen journalism. From what I saw, it was mostly social media that followed through the events that then fed into the news, the same news that then kept people informed and up to date on what was happening.

I believe it is due to such events that citizen journalism proves to be of essence and as such The Center for Innovation and Technology in collaboration with the Interlink Academy is offering a 3 month training program in mobile reporting.

By the way, citizen journalism is not limited to mobile reporting, one can still document and report on events without the aid of mobile phone. However, the advent of mobile phones has since made it 10x easier. 

The 3-month training is set to begin in 2018 on the 15^th of January. It will be broken down into 3 phases:

1.  One-week intensive training;
2.  Six weeks of e-learning;
3.  Four days of intensive training.

As part of the training, students will be taught photography skills and well as how to edit videos on their phones – quite some handy skills which can be used beyond citizen journalism I must say.

The training is open for all those living in and around Bulawayo, I’d assume mainly because the hosts intend on covering the transport costs of the attendees. I also didn’t see a fee written anywhere on the flier, so my assumption would be the training is for free. Lunch will also be provided – I see that eliminating a number of excuses right there.

Anyway, if interested you can send a motivation letter and CV to the email on the flier below (you can refer to it as well for any other details of interest).

Just remember: registration closes on the 8^th of January 2018 (as opposed to the 2017 on the flier, to err is human!) … all the best!