Combination of "Media and the ICTs" intrigue newspaper journalists in Hyderabad

April 26, 2001

A one day seminar cum workshop for the media, entitled "Media and the ICTs" was conducted on April 26 2001 by IUCN - The World Conservation Union's Communications Unit and SDNP; in collaboration with the Hyderabad Press Club, on their premises. About 25 journalists belonging to various Sindhi, Urdu and English newspapers participated in the workshop.

Mr. Zakria Sajid, Director Press Institute of Pakistan was the chief guest. He was the ex-chairman of the Mass Communications Department of Karachi University, and had played pivotal role in establishing one at Sindh University, Jamshooro. Mr. Ibad Rashdi, the chairman of Mass Communications Department, University of Sindh, was also present on the occasion.

Mr. Moin Haider Zaidi from SDNP Karachi elaborated upon the theme of the workshop in his speech: how this training can help the media people to unleash the potential of the Internet and its related tools; and how it can improve the quality of their day to day work.

Ms. Shabina Faraz from IUCN's Communications Unit gave a brief presentation of IUCN, its programmes and projects. She highlighted the unit's contribution to, and support for, environmental journalism, especially to the Forum of Environmental Journalists of Pakistan (FEJP) and its local chapters.

SDNP Karachi's Nauman Ansari presented an overview of the Internet and its tools, advanced searching techniques, mailing and distribution lists.

Mr. Nasir Panhwar from IUCN's NGO/CSU unit conducted a very informative workgroup exercise on "Key environmental issues of Sindh" for the participants. Journalists proactively participated in this group activity and made some useful recommendations. The objective was to assess the awareness level among the journalists on critical and topical environmental issues.

Another important objective of this workshop was to educate journalists about how to access environment and development news and rich information resources available on the net. Some useful and relevant sites were also explored during the hands-on training session for this purpose. The questions and answers session exploded a lot of myths and cleared a lot of concepts related to ICT's. The participants found the presentation handouts and list of important websites and mailing lists extremely informative.

In the end, certificates were distributed among the participants by the chief guest. Mr. Zakria Sajid and Mr. Ibad Rashdi were impressed to see that IUCN/SDNP were positively contributing towards promoting awareness of new technology among the Pakistani nation.